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MICHIG MICHIG RSIT AN MI RSITY NIVERS AN MICHIS MIC CHIS AN UNIVERST SITY AN UNIV MICHIG UNIV MICHIG ERSITY MIC MICHIG WIND MICHIS AN AN MIC AN CHIG MICHIG AN UNIV MICHIG VERSIT AN UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY MICHIG AN UNIV IVERS RSITY 117) AN AT AN MICHIG MICHIG ERSITY AN ERSITY EVERSIN MICHIG AN AN UNIV OF MI VERSITY MICHIC RSITY CHIG MICH AN AN MI EPIC AND ROMANCE ESSAYS ON MEDIEVAL LITERATURE 62435- William By ton W. Po Po KER = FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON London MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1897 All rights reserved PREFACE THESE essays are intended as a general description of some of the principal forms of narrative literature in the Middle Ages, and as a review of some of the more interesting works in each period. It is hardly necessary to say that the conclusion is one "in which nothing is concluded," and that whole tracts of litera- ture have been barely touched on-the English metri- cal romances, the Middle High German poems, the ballads, Northern and Southern-which would require to be considered in any systematic treatment of this part of history. Many serious difficulties have been evaded (in Finnesburh, more particularly), and many things have been taken for granted, too easily. My apology must be that there seemed to be certain results available for criticism, apart from the more strict and scientific procedure which is required to solve the more difficult problems of Beowulf, or of the old Northern or the old French poetry. It is hoped that something may be gained by a less minute and exacting consideration of the whole field, and by a vi EPIC AND ROMANCE an attempt to bring the more distant and dissociated parts of the subject into relation with one another, in one view. Some of these notes have been already used, in a course of three lectures at the Royal Institution, in March 1892, on "the Progress of Romance in the Middle Ages," and in lectures given at University College and elsewhere. The plot of the Dutch romance of Walewein was discussed in a paper submitted to the Folk-Lore Society two years ago, and published in the journal of the Society (Folk-Lore, vol. v. p. 121). I am greatly indebted to my friend Mr. Paget Toynbee for his help in reading the proofs. I cannot put out on this venture without acknow- ledgment of my obligation to two scholars, who have had nothing to do with my employment of all that I have borrowed from them, the Oxford editors of the Old Northern Poetry, Dr. Gudbrand Vigfusson and Mr. York Powell. I have still to learn what Mr. York Powell thinks of these discourses. What Gudbrand Vigfusson would have thought I cannot guess, but I am glad to remember the wise good-will which he was always ready to give, with so much else from the resources of his learning and his judgment, to those who applied to him for advice. W. P. KER. LONDON, 4th November 1896. CONTENTS ix .. Two ways of refining myth in poetry-(1) by turning it into mere fancy, and the more ludicrous things into comedy; (2) by finding an imaginative or an ethical meaning in it Instances in Icelandic literature-Lokasenna . PAGE 46 47 Snorri Sturluson, his ironical method in the Edda The old gods rescued from clerical persecution Imaginative treatment of the graver myths-the death of Balder, the Doom of the Gods Difficulties in the attainment of poetical self-command Medieval confusion and distraction Premature "crilture" • Depreciation of native work in comparison with ancient litera- ture and with theology An Icelandic gentleman's library The whalebone casket • Epic not wholly stifled by "useful knowledge' 49 50 51 52 53 54 54 55 "" પ IV- THE THREE SCHOOLS-TEUTONIC EPIC-FRENCH EPIC— THE ICELANDIC HISTORIES Early failure of Epic among the Continental Germans Old English Epic invaded by Romance (Lives of Saints, etc.) Old Northern (Icelandic) poetry full of romantic mythology French Epic and Romance contrasted Feudalism in the old French Epic (Chansons de geste) not unlike the prefeudal "heroic age" But the Chansons de geste are in many ways "romantic” Comparison of the English Song of Byrhtnoth (Maldon, A.D. 991) With the Chanson de Roland Severit fy and restraint of Byrhtnoth Mystery and pathos of Roland 10 10 58 ∞ ∞ 58 59 59 61 62 62 63 (64 Iceland and the German heroic age 66 The Icelandic paradox-old-fashioned politics together with clear understanding 67 Icelandic prose literature—its subject, the anarchy of the heroic age; its methods, clear and positive 68 The Icelandic histories, in prose, complete the development of the early Teutonic Epic poetry 70 X EPIC AND ROMANCE Early German poetry • CHAPTER II THE TEUTONIC EPIC I THE TRAGIC CONCEPTION One of the first things certain about it is that it knew the meaning of tragic situations. The Death of Ermanarie in Jordanes The story of Albon in Paulus Diaconus lets in the extant poems Death of Ermanaric in the “Poetic Edda” (Hamðismál) Some of the Northern poems show the tragic conception modified by romantic motives, yet without loss of the tragic purport -Helgi and Sigrun • Similar harmony of motives in the Waking of Angantyr Whatever may be wanting, the heroic poetry had no want o tragic plots-the "fables" are sound Value of the abstract plot (Aristotle) II SCALE OF THE POEMS List of extant poems and fragments in one or other of the older Teutonic languages (German, English, and Northern) in unrhymed alliterative verse Small amount of the extant poetry Supplemented in various ways 1. The Western Group (German and English) اند PACE 75 76 76 76 79 81 83 84 85 86 88 90 91 Amount of story contained in the several poems, and scale * treatment 93 Hildebrand a short story 94 Finnesburh, (1) the Lambeth fragment (Hickes); and (2) the abstract of the story in Beowulf ib. Finnesburh a story of (1) wrong and (2) vengeance, like the story of the death of Attila, or of the betrayal of Roland 9 EPIC AND ROMANCE 809 K39 ep CONTENTS XI Uncertainty as to the compass of the Finnesburh poem (Lambeth) in its original complete form Waldere, two fragments: the story of Walter of Aquitaine preserved in the Latin Waltharius · Plot of Waltharius Place of the Waldere fragments in the story, and probable compass of the whole poem Scale of Maldon . and of Beowulf • General resemblance in the themes of these poems-unity of action Development of style, and not neglect of unity nor multiplication of contents, accounts for the difference of length between earlier and later poems Progress of Epic in England-unlike the history of Icelandic PAGE 97 97 98 100 102 102 104 105 poetry 106 2. The Northern Group 107 The contents of the so-called "Elder Edda" (i.e. Codex Regius 2365, 4to Havn.) 108 • to what extent Epic 108 Notes on the contents of the poems, to show their scale; the Lay of Weland 109 • • Three separate stories—Helgi Hundingsbane and Sigrun Helgi Hiorvardsson and Swava Helgi and Kara (lost) • Different plan in the Lays of Thor, Prymskviða and Hymiskviða The Helgi Poems-complications of the text 110 110 110 113 114 The story of the Volsungs-the long Lay of Brynhild contains the whole story in abstract 115 116 • giving the chief place to the character of Brynhild 117 The Hell-ride of Brynhild 118 The fragmentary Lay of Brynhild (Brot af Sigurðarkviðu) . Poems on the death of Attila—the Lay of Attila (Atlakviða), 119 and the Greenland Poem of Attila (Atlamál) 121 Proportions of the story 121 A third version of the story in the Lament of Oddrun (Oddrúnargrátr) 124 • · The Death of Ermanaric (Hamdismál) 125 The Northern idylls of the heroines (Oddrun, Gudrun)—the Old Lay of Gudrun, or Gudrun's story to Theodoric . The Lay of Gudrun (Gudrúnarkviða)—Gudrun's sorrow for 126 Sigurd 127 • xii EPIC AND ROMANCE PAGE The refrain Gudrun's Chain of Woe (Tregrof Guðrúnar) 128 128 The Ordeal of Gudrun, an episodic lay 128 Poems in dialogue, without narrative— (1) Dialogues in the common epic measure-Balder's Doom, Dialogues of Sigurd, Angantyr-explanations in prose, between the dialogues 129 (2) Dialogues in the gnomic or elegiac measure: (a) vitu- perative debates Lokasenna, Harbarzliód (in irregular verse), Atli and Rimgerd 130 (b) Dialogues implying action-The Wooing of Frey (Skírnismál) 1131 Svipdag and Menglad (Grógaldr, Fiölsvinnsmál) 132 The Volsung dialogues. 133 The Western and Northern poems compared, with respect to their scale 134 135 The old English poems (Beowulf, Waldere), in scale, midway between the Northern poems and Homer Many of the Teutonic epic remains may look like the "short lays" of the agglutinative epic theory; but this is illusion 136 Two kinds of story in Teutonic Epic-(1) episodic, i.e. represent- ing a single action (Hildebrand, etc.); (2) summary, ¿e. giving the whole of a long story in abstract, with details of one part of it (IVeland, etc.) The second class is unfit for agglutination Also the first, when it is looked into The Teutonic Lays are too individual to be conveniently fused into larger masses of narrative 137 138 139 141 III EPIC AND BALLAD POETRY Many of the old epic lays are on the scale of popular ballads Their style is different As may be proved where later ballads have taken up the epic subjects 142 ... 143 144 The Danish ballads of Ungen Sveidal (Svipdag and Menglad) and of Sivard (Sigurd and Brynhild) 146 147 The early epic poetry, unlike the ballads, was ambitious and capable of progress 150 CONTENTS xiii IV THE STYLE OF THE POEMS Rhetorical art of the alliterative verse PAGE 154 English and Norse 155 Different besetting temptations in England and the North 157 English tameness; Norse emphasis and false wit (the Scaldic poetry) 159 Narrative poetry undeveloped in the North; unable to compete with the lyrical forms • Lyrical element in Norse narrative Volospá, the greatest of all the Northern poems 159 159 161 False heroics; Krákumál (Death-Song of Ragnar Lodbrok) A fresh start, in prose, with no rhetorical encumbrances. 162 163 V THE PROGRESS OF EPIC Various renderings of the same story due (1) to accidents of tradition and impersonal causes; (2) to calculation and selection of motives by poets, and intentional modification of traditional matter • The three versions of the death of Gunnar and Hogni com- pared-Atlakviða, Atlamál, Oddrúnargrátr Agreement of the three poems in ignoring the German theory of Kriemhild's revenge • The incidents of the death of Hogni clear in Atlakviða, ap- parently confused and ill-recollected in the other two poems But it turns out that these two poems had each a view of its own which made it impossible to use the original story Atlamál, the work of a critical author, making his selection of incidents from heroic tradition 167 169 172 173 174 178 the largest epic work in Northern poetry, and the last of its school 179 The "Poetic Edda " a collection of deliberate experiments in poetry, and not of casual popular variants (18 180 xiv EPIC AND ROMANCE VI BEOWULF PAGE Beowulf claims to be a single complete work Want of unity: a story and a sequel 182 184 More unity in Beowulf than in some Greek epics. The first 2200 lines form a complete story, not ill composed Homeric method of episodes and allusions in Beowulf 185 • • 186 * 187 and Waldere Triviality of the main plot in both parts of Beowulf―tragic significance in some of the allusions The characters in Beowulf abstract types The adventures and sentiments commonplace, especially in the fight with the dragon 190 • 191 193 Adventure of Grendel not pure fantasy 194 Grendel's mother more romantic 198 Beowulf is able to give epic dignity to a commonplace set of romantic adventures 199 CHAPTER III THE ICELANDIC SAGAS I ICELAND AND THE HEROIC AGE The close of Teutonic Epic-in Germany the old forms were lost, but not the old stories, in the later Middle Ages England kept the alliterative verse through the Middle Ages Heroic themes in Danish ballads, and elsewhere 205 206 207 Place of Iceland in the heroic tradition-a new heroic litera- 208 ture in prose CONTENTS XV II MATTER AND FORM The Sagas are not pure fiction PAGE 211 Difficulty of giving form to genealogical details 212 Miscellaneous incidents 214 Literary value of the historical basis--the characters well known and recognisable 215 The coherent Sagas-the tragic motive 217 • Plan of Njála 218- of Laxdæla 219 of Egils Saga. 220 Vápnfirðinga Saga, a story of two generations. Viga Glúms Saga, a biography without tragedy Reykdæla Saga Grettis Saga and Gísla clearly worked out 221 221 223 224 Passages of romance in these histories 226 Hrafnkels Saga Freysgoða, a tragic idyll, well proportioned Great differences of scale among the Sagas-analogies with the 227 heroic poems 228 III THE HEROIC IDEAL Unheroic matters of fact in the Sagas 230 Heroic characters 232 Heroic rhetoric 233 Danger of exaggeration-Kjartan in Laxdæla. The heroic ideal not made too explicit or formal 235 237 IV TRAGIC IMAGINATION Tragic contradictions in the Sagas—Gisli, Njal 238 Fantasy 239 Faxi Laxdæla a reduction of the story of Sigurd and Brynhild to andæla a reduction of the st the terms of common life 240 Compare Ibsen's Warriors in Helgeland 241 The Sagas are a late stage in the progress of heroic literature The Northern rationalism 242 244 xvi EPIC AND ROMANCE PAGE Self-restraint and irony 246 The elegiac mood infrequent 247 The story of Howard of Icefirth-ironical pathos 248 The conventional Viking 250 The harmonies of Njála 252 and of Laxdæla 255 The two speeches of Gudrun 256 V COMEDY The Sagas not bound by solemn conventions 259 Comic humours 261 Bjorn and his wife in Njála. 262 Bandamanna Saga: "The Confederates,” a Comedy 264 Satirical criticism of the "heroic age” 267 Tragic incidents in Bandamanna Saga 268 Neither the comedy nor tragedy of the Sagas is monotonous or abstract 269 VI THE ART OF NARRATIVE Organic unity of the best Sagas 270 Method of representing occurrences as they appear at the time. 271 Instance from Porgils Saga 273 Another method—the death of Kjartan as it appeared to a churl 277 Psychology (not analytical) 279 • Impartiality-justice to the hero's adversaries (Færeyinga Saga) 281 VII EPIC AND HISTORY Form of Saga used for contemporary history in the thirteenth century 282 The historians, Ari (1067-1148) and Snorri (1178-1241). 284 The Life of King Sverre, by Abbot Karl Jónsson 285 Sturla (c. 1214-1284), his history of Iceland in his own time (Islendinga or Sturlunga Saga) 286 The matter ready to his hand 287 CONTENTS xvii Biographies incorporated in Sturlunga: Thorgils and Haflidi Sturlu Saga The midnight raid (A.D. 1171) Lives of Bishop Gudmund, Hrafn, and Aron • Sturla's own work (Islendinga Saga) The burning of Flugumyri . Traces of the heroic manner PAGE 289 290 291 294 295 297 302 305 • 305 • The character of this history brought out by contrast with Sturla's other work, the Life of King Hacon of Norway Norwegian and Icelandic politics in the thirteenth century Norway more fortunate than Iceland—the history less interesting 306 Sturla and Joinville contemporaries Their methods of narrative compared 307 308 VIII THE NORTHERN PROSE ROMANCES Romantic interpolations in the Sagas-the ornamental version of Fóstbræðra Saga 315 The secondary romantic Sagas— Frithiof 317 French romance imported (Strengleikar, Tristrams Saga, etc.) 318 Romantic Sagas made out of heroic poems (Volsunga Saga, etc.) 319 and out of authentic Sagas by repetition of common forms and motives 320 Romantic conventions in the original Sagas 321 Laxdæla and Gunnlaugs Saga-Thorstein the White 322 Thorstein Staffsmitten 323 Sagas turned into rhyming romances (Rímur). 324 and into ballads in the Faroes. 324 CHAPTER IV THE OLD FRENCH EPIC (CHANSONS DE GESTE) Lateness of the extant versions 329 Competition of Epic and Romance in the twelfth century 330 xviii EPIC AND ROMANCE PAGE Widespread influence of the Chansons de geste—a contrast to the Sagas Narrative style • No obscurities of diction The "heroic age" imperfectly represented 331 332 333 334 but not ignored Roland-heroic idealism—France and Christendom William of Orange—Aliscans Rainouart-exaggeration of heroism 336 337 339 340 Another class of stories in the Chansons de geste, more like the Sagas. 341 Raoul de Cambrai 342 Barbarism of style 343 • Garin le Loherain-style clarified 344 Problems of character-Fromont 345 The story of the death of Begon 346 unlike contemporary work of the Romantic School 348 The lament for Begon. 351 Raoul and Garin contrasted with Roland 353 Comedy in French Epic-"humours" in Garin 355 in the Coronemenz Looïs, etc. 356 Romantic additions to heroic cycles—la Prise d'Orange Huon de Bordeaux-the original story grave and tragic converted to Romance 358 359 363 • CHAPTER V. ROMANCE AND THE OLD FRENCH ROMANTIC SCHOOLS Romance an element in Epic and Tragedy apart from all "" "romantic schools The literary movements of the twelfth century A new beginning The Romantic School unromantic in its methods Professional Romance . Characteristics of the school-courteous sentiment Decorative passages-descripticns-pedantry. 367 368 369 370 371 375 376 CONTENTS xix PAGE Instances from Roman de Troie 377 and from Ider, etc. 379 Romantic adventures—the "matter of Rome" and the "matter of Britain " 381 Blending of classical and Celtic influences-e.g. in Benoit's Medea 382 Methods of narrative-simple, as in the Lay of Guingamor; overloaded, as in Walewein 385 Guingamor. 386 Walewein, a popular tale disguised as a chivalrous romance 388 The different versions of Libeaux Desconus—one of them is sophisticated 392 Tristram-the Anglo-Norman poems comparatively simple and ingenuous . 393 French Romance and Provençal Lyric 394 Ovid in the Middle Ages—the Art of Love 395 The Heroines 396 Benoit's Medea again 397 Chrestien of Troyes, his place at the beginning of modern litera- ture (C Enlightenment" in the Romantic School 399 400 The sophists of Romance-the rhetoric of sentiment and passion 401 The progress of Romance from medieval to modern literature Chrestien of Troyes, his inconsistencies-nature and convention Departure from conventional romance; Chrestien's Enid. Chrestien's Cliges—“ sensibility "" Flamenca, a Provençal story of the thirteenth century-the 402 403 405 408 author a follower of Chrestien 410 His acquaintance with romantic literature 411 and rejection of the "machinery” of adventures . 412 Flamenca, an appropriation of Ovid-disappearance of romantic mythology . 412 The Lady of Vergi, a short tragic story without false rhetoric Use of medieval themes by the great poets of the fourteenth 414 century 415 Boccaccio and Chaucer-the Teseide and the Knight's Tale 416 Variety of Chaucer's methods 417 Want of art in the Man of Law's Tale 417 The abstract point of honour (Clerk's Tale, Franklin's Tale) 418 Pathos in the Legend of Good Women 419 Romantic method perfect in the Knight's Tale 419 XX EPIC AND ROMANCE PAGE Anelida, the abstract form of romance 419 In Troilus and Criseyde the form of medieval romance is filled out with strong dramatic imagination 420 Romance obtains the freedom of Epic, without the old local and national limitations of Epic Conclusion 421 • 423 APPENDIX Note A-Rhetoric of the Alliterative Poetry . Note B-Kjartan and Olaf Tryggvason. 425 427 Note C-Eyjolf Karsson 433 Note D-Two Catalogues of Romances. 436 • INDEX 443 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION B I THE HEROIC AGE THE title of Epic, or of "heroic poem," is claimed by historians for a number of works belonging to the earlier Middle Ages, and to the medieval origins of modern literature. "Epic" is a term freely applied to the old school of Germanic narrative poetry, which in different dialects is represented by the poems of Hildebrand, of Beowulf, of Sigurd and Brynhild. Epic" is the name for the body of old French poems which is headed by the Chanson de Roland. The rank of Epic is assigned by many to the Nibe- lungenlied, not to speak of other Middle High German poems on themes of German tradition. The title of prose Epic has been claimed for the Sagas of Iceland. 66 By an equally common consent the name Romance is given to a number of kinds of medieval narrative by which the Epic is succeeded and displaced; most notably in France, but also in other countries which were led, mainly by the example and influence of France, to give up their own "epic" forms and subjects in favour of new manners. 4 CHAP. I EPIC AND ROMANCE "" This literary classification corresponds in general history to the difference between the earlier "heroic age and the age of chivalry. The "epics" of Hilde- brand and Beowulf belong, if not wholly to German heathendom, at any rate to the earlier and prefeudal stage of German civilisation. The French epics, in their extant form, belong for the most part in spirit, if not always in date, to an order of things un- modified by the great changes of the twelfth century. While among the products of the twelfth century one of the most remarkable is the new school of French romance, the brilliant and frequently vainglorious exponent of the modern ideas of that age, and of all its chivalrous and courtly fashions of thought and sentiment. The difference of the two orders of literature is as plain as the difference in the art of war between the two sides of the battle of Hastings, which indeed is another form of the same thing; for the victory of the Norman knights over the English axemen has more than a fanciful or super- ficial analogy to the victory of the new literature of chivalry over the older forms of heroic narrative. The history of those two orders of literature, of the earlier Epic kinds, followed by the various types of medieval Romance, is parallel to the general political history of the earlier and the later Middle Ages, and may do something to illustrate the general progress of the nations. The passage from the earlier “heroic” civilisation to the age of chivalry was not made without some contemporary record of the "form and pressure" of the times in the changing SECT. I 5 THE HEROIC AGE fashions of literature, and in successive experiments of the imagination. The two groups Whatever Epic may mean, it implies some weight and solidity; Romance means nothing, if it does not convey some notion of mystery and fantasy.V A general distinction of this kind, whatever names may be used to render it, can be shown, in medieval literature, to hold good of the two large groups of narrative belonging to the earlier and the later Middle Ages respectively. Beowulf might stand for the one side, Lancelot or Gawain for the other. It is a difference not confined to literature. are distinguished from one another, as the respectable piratical gentleman of the North Sea coast in the ninth or tenth century differs from one of the companions of St. Louis. The latter has something fantastic in his ideas which the other has not. The Crusader may indeed be natural and brutal enough in most of his ways, but he has lost the sobriety and simplicity of the earlier type of rover. If nothing else, his way of fighting the undisciplined cavalry charge-would convict him of extravagance as compared with men of business, like the settlers of Iceland for example. The two great kinds of narrative literature in the Middle Ages might be distinguished by their favourite incidents and commonplaces of adventure. No kind of adventure is so common or better told in the earlier heroic manner than the defence of a narrow place against odds. Such are the stories of Hamther and Sorli in the hall of Ermanaric, of the Niblung kings in the hall of Attila, of the Fight of Finnesburh, 6 CHAP. I EPIC. AND ROMANCE of Walter at the Wasgenstein, of Byrhtnoth at Maldon, of Roland in the Pyrenees. Such are some of the finest passages in the Icelandic Sagas: the death of Gunnar, the burning of Njal's house, the burning of Flugumyri (an authentic record), the last fight of Kjartan in Svinadal, and of Grettir at Drangey. The story of Cynewulf and Cyneheard in the English Chronicle may well have come from a poem in which an attack and defence of this sort were narrated. The favourite adventure of medieval romance is. something different,—a knight riding alone through a forest; another knight; a shock of lances; a fight on foot with swords, "racing, tracing, and foining like two wild boars"; then, perhaps, recognition-the two knights belong to the same household and are engaged in the same quest. . Et Guivrez vers lui esperone, De rien nule ne l'areisone, Ne Erec ne li sona mot. Erec, 1. 5007. This collision of blind forces, this tournament at random, takes the place, in the French romances, of the older kind of combat. In the older kind the parties have always good reasons of their own for fighting; they do not go into it with the same sort of readiness as the wandering champions of romance. The change of temper and fashion represented by the appearance and the and the vogue of the medieval French romances is a change involving the whole world, and going far beyond the compass of literature and SECT. I 7 THE HEROIC AGE literary history. It meant the final surrender of the old ideas, independent of Christendom, which had been enough for the Germanic nations in their earlier days; it was the close of their heroic age. What the "heroic age" of the modern nations really was, may be learned from what is left of their heroic literature, especially from three groups or classes, the old Teutonic alliterative poems on native subjects; the French Chansons de Geste; and the Icelandic Sagas. All these three orders, whatever their faults may be, do something to represent a society which is heroic" as the Greeks in Homer are heroic. There can be no mistake about the likeness. To compare the imaginations and the phrases of any of these barbarous works with the poetry of Homer may be futile, but their contents may be compared without reference to their poetical qualities; and there is no question that the life depicted has many things in common with Homeric life, and agrees with Homer in ignorance of the peculiar ideas of medieval chivalry The form of society in an heroic age is aristocratic ---- and magnificent. At the same time, this aristocracy differs from that of later and more specialised forms of civilisation. It does not make an insuperable difference between gentle and simple. There is not the extreme division of labour that produces the contempt of the lord for the villain. The nobles have not yet discovered for themselves any form of occupa- tion or mode of thought in virtue of which they are widely severed from the commons, nor have they 8 CHAP. I EPIC AND ROMANCE invented any such ideal of life or conventional system of conduct as involves an ignorance or depreciation of the common pursuits of those below them. They have no such elaborate theory of conduct as is found in the chivalrous society of the Middle Ages. The great man is the man who is best at the things with which every one is familiar. The epic hero may despise the churlish man, may, like Odysseus in the Iliad (ii. 198), show little sympathy or patience with the bellowings of the multitude, but he may not ostenta- tiously refuse all community of ideas with simple people. His magnificence is not defended by scruples. about everything low. It would not have mattered to Odysseus if he had been seen travelling in a cart, like Lancelot; though for Lancelot it was a great misfortune and anxiety. The art and pursuits of a gentleman in the heroic age are different from those of the churl, but not so far different as to keep them in different spheres. There is a community of prosaic interests. The great man is a good judge of cattle; he sails his own ship. A gentleman adventurer on board his own ship, following out his own ideas, carrying his men with him by his own power of mind and temper, and not by means of any system of naval discipline to which he as well as they must be subordinate; surpassing his men in skill, knowledge, and ambition, but taking part with them and allowing them to take part in the enterprise, is a good representative of the heroic age. This relation between captain and men may be found, accidentally and exceptionally, in later and more * SECT. I 9 THE HEROIC AGE sophisticated forms of society. In the heroic age a relation between a great man and his followers similar to that between an Elizabethan captain and his crew is found to be the most important and fundamental relation in society. In later times it is only by a special favour of circumstances, as for example by the isolation of shipboard from all larger monarchies, that the heroic relation between the leader and the followers can be repeated. As society becomes more complex and conventional, this relation ceases. The homeli- ness of conversation between Odysseus and his vassals, or between Njal and Thord Freedman's son, is discouraged by the rules of courtly behaviour as gentlefolk become more idle and ostentatious, and their vassals more sordid and dependent. The secrets also of political intrigue and dexterity make a differ- ence between noble and villain, in later and more complex medieval politics, such as is unknown in the earlier days and the more homely forms of Society. An heroic age may be full of all kinds of nonsense and superstition, but its motives of action are mainly positive and sensible,-cattle, sheep, piracy, abduction, merchandise, recovery of stolen goods, revenge. The narrative poetry of an heroic age, whatever dignity it may obtain either by its dramatic force of imagination, or by the aid of its mythology, will keep its hold upon such common matters, simply because it cannot do without the essential practical interests, and has nothing to put in their place, if kings and chiefs are to be represented at all. The heroic age cannot dress up ideas or sentiments to play the part of characters. ΙΟ CHAP. I EPIC AND ROMANCE L If its characters are not men they are nothing, not even thoughts or allegories; they cannot go on talking unless they have something to do; and so the whole business of life comes bodily into the epic poem. How much the matter of the Northern heroic literature resembles the Homeric, may be felt and recognised at every turn in a survey of the ground. In both there are the ashen spears, there are the shepherds of the people; the retainers bound by loyalty to the prince who gives them meat and drink; the great hall with its minstrelsy, its boasting and bicker- ing; the battles which are a number of single combats, while "physiology supplies the author with images for the same; the heroic rule of conduct (loµev);² the eminence of the hero, and at the same time his community of occupation and interest with those who are less distinguished. 2 "" 1 There are other resemblances also, but some of these are miraculous, and perhaps irrelevant. By what magic is it that the cry of Odysseus, wounded and hard bestead in his retreat before the Trojans, comes over us like the three blasts of the horn of Roland? Thrice he shouted, as loud as the head of a man will bear; and three times Menelaus heard the sound thereof, and quickly he turned and spake to Ajax: "Ajax, there is come about me the cry of Odysseus slow to yield; and it is like as though the Trojans had come hard upon him by himself alone, closing him round in the battle.”3 1 Johnson on the Epic Poem (Life of Milton). 3 Il. xi. 462. 2 Il. xii. 328. SECT. I II THE HEROIC AGE It is reported as a discovery made by Mephisto- pheles in Thessaly, in the classical Walpurgis- nacht, that the company there was very much like his old acquaintances on the Brocken. A similar discovery, in regard to more honourable personages and other scenes, may be made by other Gothic travellers in a "south-eastward" journey to heroic Greece. The classical reader of the Northern heroics may be frequently disgusted by their failures; he may also be bribed, if not to applaud, at least to continue his study, by the glimmerings and "shadowy recollections," the affinities and correspondences between the Homeric and the Northern heroic world. Beowulf and his companions sail across the sea to Denmark on an errand of deliverance, to cleanse the land of monsters. They are welcomed by Hrothgar, king of the Danes, and by his gentle queen, in a house less fortunate than the house of Alcinous, for it is exposed to the attacks of the lumpish ogre that Beowulf has to kill, but recalling in its splendour, in the manner of its entertainment, and the bearing of its gracious lord and lady, the house where Odysseus told his story. Beowulf, like Odysseus, is assailed by an envious person with discourteous words. Hunferth, the Danish courtier, is irritated by Beowulf's presence; "he could not endure that any one should be counted worthier than himself"; he speaks enviously, a biting speech-Ovμodaкns yàp μûoos-and is answered in the tone of Odysseus to Euryalus.¹ Beowulf has a story to tell of his former 1 Od. viii. 165. 12 CHAP. I EPIC AND ROMANCE perils among the creatures of the sea. It is differently introduced from that of Odysseus, and has not the same importance, but it increases the likeness between the two adventurers. In the shadowy halls of the Danish king a minstrel sings of the famous deeds of men, and his song is given as an interlude in the main action. It is a poem on that same tragedy of Finnesburh, which is the theme of a separate poem in the Old English heroic cycle; so Demodocus took his subjects from the heroic cycle of Achaea. The leisure of the Danish king's house is filled in the same manner as the leisure of Phaeacia. In spite of the difference of climate, it is impossible to mistake the likeness between the Greek and the Northern conceptions of a dignified and reasonable way of life. The magnifi- cence of the Homeric great man is like the magnifi- cence of the Northern lord, in so far as both are equally marked off from the pusillanimity and cheapness of popular morality on the one hand, and from the ostentation of Oriental or chivalrous society on the other. The likeness here is not purely in the historical details, but much more in the spirit that informs the poetry. If this part of Beowulf is a Northern Odyssey, there is nothing in the whole range of English literature so like a scene from the Iliad as the narrative of Maldon. It is a battle in which the separate deeds of the fighters are described, with not quite so much anatomy as in Homer. The fighting about the body of Byrhtnoth is described as strongly SECT. I 13 THE HEROIC AGE It as "the Fighting at the Wall" in the twelfth book of the Iliad, and essentially in the same way, with the interchange of blows clearly noted, together with the speeches and thoughts of the combatants. Even the most heroic speech in Homer, even the power of Sarpedon's address to Glaucus in the twelfth book of the Iliad, cannot discredit, by comparison, the heroism and the sublimity of the speech of the “old companion" at the end of Maldon. The language is simple, but it is not less adequate in its own way than the simplicity of Sarpedon's argument. states, perhaps more clearly and absolutely than anything in Greek, the Northern principle of resist- ance to all odds, and defiance of ruin. In the North the individual spirit asserts itself more absolutely against the bodily enemies than in Greece; the defiance is made wholly independent of any vestige of prudent consideration; the contradiction, "Thought the harder, Heart the keener, Mood the more, as our Might lessens," is stated in the most extreme terms. This does not destroy the resemblance between the Greek and the Northern ideal, or between the respective forms of representation. 66 The creed of Maldon is that of Achilles :1 Xanthus, what need is there to prophesy of death? Well do I know that it is my doom to perish here, far from my father and mother; but for all that I will not turn back, until I give the Trojans their fill of war." The difference is that in the English case the strain is greater, the irony deeper, the 1 П. xix. 420. 14 CHAP. I EPIC AND ROMANCE antithesis between the spirit and the body more paradoxical. Where the centre of life is a great man's house, and where the most brilliant society is that which is gathered at his feast, where competitive boasting, story-telling, and minstrelsy are the principal intel- lectual amusements, it is inevitable that these should find their way into a kind of literature which has no ✅ foundation except experience and tradition. Where fighting is more important than anything else in active life, and at the same time is carried on without organisation or skilled combinations, it is inevitable that it should be described as it is in the Iliad, the Song of Maldon, the Song of Roland, and the Icelandic Sagas, as a series of personal encounters, in which every stroke is remembered. From this early aristocratic form of society, there is derived in one age the narrative of life at Ithaca or of the naviga- tions of Odysseus, in another the representation of the household of Njal or of Olaf the Peacock, and of the rovings of Olaf Tryggvason and other captains. There is an affinity between these histories in virtue of something over and above the likeness in the conditions of things they describe. There is a community of literary sense as well as of historical conditions, in the record of Achilles and Kjartan Olafsson, of Odysseus and Njal. The circumstances of an heroic age may be found in numberless times and places, in the history of the world. Among its accompaniments will be generally, found some sort of literary record of sentiments and SECT. I 15 THE HEROIC AGE imaginations; but to find an heroic literature of the highest order is not so easy. Many nations instead of an Iliad or an Odyssey have had to make shift with conventional repetitions of the praise of chieftains, without any story; many have had to accept from their story-tellers all sorts of monstrous adventures in place of the humanities of debate and argument. Epic literature is not common; it is brought to perfection by a slow process through many genera- tions. The growth of Epic out of the older and commoner forms of poetry, hymns, dirges, or panegyrics, is a progress towards intellectual and imaginative freedom. Few nations have attained, at the close of their heroic age, to a form of poetical art in which men are represented freely in action and conversation. The labour and meditation of all the world has not discovered, for the purposes of narrative, any essential modification of the procedure of Homer. Those who are considered reformers and discoverers in later times-Chaucer, Cervantes, Fielding-are discoverers merely of the old devices of dramatic narration which were understood by Homer and described after him by Aristotle. · The growth of Epic, in the beginning of the history of the modern nations, has been generally thwarted and stunted. It cannot be said of many of the languages of the North and West of Europe that in them the epic form has come fully to its own, or has realised its proper nature. Many of them, however, have at least made a beginning. The history of the X older German literature, and of old French, is the 16 CHAP. I EPIC AND ROMANCE history of a great number of experiments in Epic; of attempts, that is, to represent great actions in narra- tive, with the personages well defined. These - experiments are begun in the right way. They are not merely barbarous nor fantastic. They are different also from such traditional legends and romances as may survive among simple people long after the day of their old glories and their old kings. The poems of Beowulf and Waldere, of Roland and William of Orange, are intelligible and reasonable works, determined in the main by the same essential principles of narrative art, and of dramatic conversa- tion within the narrative, as are observed in the practice of Homer. Further, these are poems in which, as in the Homeric poems, the ideas of their time are conveyed and expressed in a noble manner : they are high-spirited poems. They have got them- selves clear of the confusion and extravagance of early civilisation, and have hit upon a way of telling a story clearly and in proportion, and with dignity. They are epic in virtue of their superiority to the more fantastic motives of interest, and in virtue of their study of human character. They are heroic in the nobility of their temper and their style. If at any time they indulge in heroic commonplaces of sentiment, they do so without insincerity or affecta- tion, as the expression of the general temper or opinion of their own time. They are not separated widely from the matters of which they treat; they are not antiquarian revivals of past forms, nor tradi- tional vestiges of things utterly remote and separate SECT. I 17 THE HEROIC AGE = from the actual world. What art they may possess is different from the "rude sweetness" of popular ballads, and from the unconscious grace of popular tales. They have in different degrees and manners the form of epic poetry, in their own right. There are recognisable qualities that serve to distinguish even a fragment of heroic poetry from the ballads and romances of a lower order, however near these latter forms may approach at times to the epic dignity. II EPIC AND ROMANCE It is the nature of epic poetry to be at ease in regard to its subject matter, to be free from the strain and excitement of weaker and more abstract forms of poetry in dealing with heroic subjects. The heroic ideal of epic is not attained by a process of abstrac- tion and separation from the meannesses of familiar things. The magnificence and aristocratic dignity of epic is conformable to the practical and ethical standards of the heroic age; that is to say, it tolerates a number of things that may be found mean and trivial by academicians. Epic poetry is one of the complex and comprehensive kinds of literature, in which most of the other kinds may be included- romance, history, comedy; tragical, comical, histori- cal, pastoral are terms not sufficiently various to denote the variety of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The "common life" of the Homeric poems may appeal to modern pedantic theorists, and be used by them in support of Euripidean or Wordsworthian receipts for literature. But the comprehensiveness of the greater kinds of poetry, of Homer and Shake- SECT. II 19 EPIC AND ROMANCE speare, is a different thing from the premeditated and self-assertive realism of the authors who take viciously to common life by way of protest against the romantic extreme. It has its origin, not in a critical theory about the proper matter of literature, but in dramatic imagination. In an epic poem where the characters are vividly imagined, it follows naturally that their various moods and problems involve a variety of scenery and properties, and so the whole business of life comes into the story. ཟ The success of epic poetry depends on the author's power of imagining and representing characters. A kind of success and a kind of magnificence may be attained in stories, professing to be epic, in which there is no dramatic virtue, in which every new scene and new adventure merely goes to accumulate, in immortal verse, the proofs of the hero's nullity and insignificance. This is not the epic poetry of the heroic ages. Aristotle, in his discussion of tragedy, chose to lay stress upon the plot, the story. On the other hand, to complete the paradox, in the epic he makes the characters all-important, not the story. Without the tragic plot or fable, the tragedy becomes a series of moral essays or monologues; the life of the drama is derived from the original idea of the fable which is its subject. Without dramatic representation of the characters, epic is mere history or romance the variety and life of epic are to be found in the drama that springs up at every encounter of the personages. 20 CHAP. I EPIC AND ROMANCE "C Homer is the only poet who knows the right proportions of epic narrative; when to narrate, and when to let the characters speak for themselves. Other poets for the most part tell their story straight on, with scanty passages of drama and far between. Homer, with little prelude, leaves the stage to his personages, men and women, all with characters of their own." 1 Aristotle wrote with very little consideration for the people who were to come after him, and gives little countenance to such theories of epic as have at various times been prevalent among the critics, in which the dignity of the subject is insisted on. He does not imagine it the chief duty of an epic + poet to choose a lofty argument for historical rhetoric. He does not say a word about the national or the ecumenical importance of the themes of the epic poet. His analysis of the plot of the Odyssey, but for the reference to Poseidon, might have been the description of a modern realistic story. "A man is abroad for many years, persecuted by! Poseidon and alone; meantime the suitors of his wife are wasting his estate and plotting against his son; after many perils by sea he returns to his own country and discovers himself to his friends. He 1 "Ομηρος δὲ ἄλλα τε πολλὰ ἄξιος ἐπαινεῖσθαι καὶ δὴ καὶ ὅτι μόνος τῶν ποιητῶν οὐκ ἀγνοεῖ ὃ δεῖ ποιεῖν αὐτόν. αὐτὸν γὰρ δεῖ τὸν ποιητὴν ἐλάχιστα λέγειν· οὐ γάρ ἐστι κατὰ ταῦτα μιμητής. οἱ μὲν οὖν ἄλλοι αὐτοὶ μὲν δι᾿ ὅλου ἀγωνίζονται, μιμοῦνται δὲ ὀλίγα καὶ ὀλιγάκις· ὁ δὲ ὀλίγα φροιμιασάμενος εὐθὺς εἰσάγει ἄνδρα ἢ γυναῖκα ἢ ἄλλο τι ἦθος καὶ οὐδέν᾽ ἀήθη ἀλλ᾽ ἔχοντα ἤθη. — ARIST. Poet. 1460 a 5. SECT. II 21 EPIC AND ROMANCE 1 falls on his enemies and destroys them, and so comes to his own again." The Iliad has more likeness than the Odyssey to the common pattern of later sophisticated epics. But the war of Troy is not the subject of the Iliad in the same way as the siege of Jerusalem is the subject of Tasso's poem. The story of the Aeneid can hardly be told in the simplest form without some reference to the destiny of Rome, or the story of Paradise Lost without the feud of heaven and hell. But in the Iliad, the assistance of the Olympians, or even the presence of the whole of Greece, is not in the same degree essential to the plot of the story of Achilles. In the form of Aristotle's summary of the Odyssey, reduced to "the cool element of prose," the Iliad may be proved to be something quite different from the common fashion of literary epics. It might go in something like this way :- "A certain man taking part in a siege is slighted by the general, and in his resentment withdraws from the war, though his own side is in great need of his help. His dearest friend having been killed by the enemy, he comes back into the action and takes vengeance for his friend, and allows himself to be reconciled." It is the debate among the characters, and not the onset of Hera and Athena in the chariot of Heaven, that gives its greatest power to the Iliad. The Iliad, with its "machines," its catalogue of the forces, its funeral games, has contributed more than the Odyssey to the common pattern of manufactured 22 CHAP. I EPIC AND ROMANCE epics. But the essence of the poem is not to be found among the Olympians. Achilles refusing the embassy or yielding to Priam has no need of the Olympian background. The poem is in a great degree independent of "machines"; its life is in the drama of the characters. The source of all its variety is the imagination by which the characters are dis- tinguished; the liveliness and variety of the characters bring with them all the other kinds of variety. It is impossible for the author who knows his personages intimately to keep to any one exclusive mode of sentiment or one kind of scene. He cannot be merely tragical and heroic, or merely comical and pastoral; these are points of view to which those authors are confined who are possessed by one kind of sentiment or sensibility, and who wish to find expression for their own prevailing mood. The author who is interested primarily in his characters will not allow them to be obliterated by the story or by its diffused impersonal sentiment. The action of an heroic poem must be "of a certain magnitude," but the accessories need not be all heroic and magnificent; the heroes do not derive their magnifi- cence from the scenery, the properties, and the author's rhetoric, but contrariwise: the dramatic force and self-consistency of the dramatis personae give poetic value to any accessories of scenery or sentiment which may be required by the action. They are not figures "animating" a landscape; what the landscape means for the poet's audience is determined by the character of his personages. SECT. II 23 EPIC AND ROMANCE All the variety of epic is explained by Aristotle's remark on Homer. Where the characters are true, and dramatically represented, there can be no monotony. In the different kinds of Northern epic literature- German, English, French, and Norse-belonging to the Northern heroic ages, there will be found in different degrees this epic quality of drama. What- ever magnificence they may possess comes mainly from the dramatic strength of the heroes, and in a much less degree from the historic dignity or import- ance of the issues of the story, or from its mytho- logical decorations. The place of history in the heroic poems belonging to an heroic age is sometimes misconceived. Early epic poetry may be concerned with great historic events. It does not necessarily emphasise-by preference it does not emphasise the historic importance or the historic results of the events with which it deals. Heroic poetry implies an heroic age, an age of pride and courage, in which there is not any extreme organisation of politics to hinder the individual talent and its achievements, nor on the other hand too much isolation of the hero through the absence of any national or popular consciousness. There must be some unity of sentiment, some common standard of appreciation, among the people to whom the heroes belong, if they are to escape oblivion. But this common sentiment must not be such as to make the idea of the community and its life predominant over the individual genius of its 24 CHAP. I EPIC AND ROMANCE members. In such a case there may be a Roman history, but not anything approaching the nature of the Homeric poems. In some epic poems belonging to an heroic age, and not to a time of self-conscious and reflective literature, there may be found general conceptions that seem to resemble those of the Aeneid rather than those of the Iliad. In many of the old French Chansons de Geste, the war against the infidels is made the general subject of the story, and the general idea of the Holy War is expressed as fully as by Tasso. Here, however, the circumstances are excep- tional. The French epic with all its Homeric analogies is not as sincere as Homer, Homer. It is exposed to the touch of influences from another world, and though many of the French poems, or great part of many of them, may tell of heroes who would be content with the simple and positive rules of the heroic life, this is not allowed them. They are brought within the sphere of other ideas, of another civilisation, and lose their independence. Most of the old German heroic poetry is clearly to be traced, as far as its subjects are concerned, to the most exciting periods in early German history, between the fourth and the sixth centuries. The names that seem to have been most commonly known to the poets are the names that are most important to the historian-Ermanaric, Attila, Theodoric. In the wars of the great migration the spirit of each of the German families was quickened, and at the same time the spirit of the whole of Germany, so that each SECT. II 25 EPIC AND ROMANCE part sympathised with all the rest, and the fame of the heroes went abroad beyond the limits of their own kindred. Ermanaric, Attila, and Theodoric, Sigfred the Frank, and Gundahari the Burgundian, are heroes over all the region occupied by all forms of Teutonic language. But although the most im- portant period of early German history may be said to have produced the old German heroic poetry, by giving a number of heroes to the poets, at the same time that the imagination was stirred to appreciate great things and make the most of them, still the result is nothing like the patriotic epic in twelve books, the Aeneid or the Lusiad, which chooses, of set purpose, the theme of the national glory. Nor is it like those old French epics in which there often appears a contradiction between the story of individual heroes, pursuing their own fortunes, and the idea of a common cause to which their own fortunes ought to be, but are not always, subordinate. The great historical names which appear in the old German heroic poetry are seldom found there in anything like their historical character, and not once in their chief historical aspect as adversaries of the Roman Empire. Ermanaric, Attila, and Theodoric are all brought into the same Niblung story, a story widely known in different forms, though it was never adequately written out. The true history of the war between the Burgundians and the Huns in the fifth century is forgotten. In place of it, there is associated with the life and death of Gundahari the Burgundian king a story which may have been 26 CHAP. I EPIC AND ROMANCE vastly older, and may have passed through many different forms before it became the story of the Niblung treasure, of Sigfred and Brynhild. This, which has made free with so many great historical names, the name of Attila, the name of Theodoric, has little to do with history. In this heroic story coming out of the heroic age, there is not much that can be traced to historical as distinct from mythical tradition. The tragedy of the death of Attila, as told in the Atlakvisa and the Atlamál, may indeed owe something to the facts recorded by historians, and something more to vaguer historical tradition of the vengeance of Rosamund on Alboin the Lombard. But, in the main, the story of the Niblungs is independent of history, in respect of its matter; in its meaning and effect as a poetical story it is absolutely free from history. It is a drama of personal encounters and rivalries. This also, like the story of Achilles, is fit for a stage in which the characters are left free to declare themselves in their own way, unhampered by any burden of history, any purpose or moral apart from the events that are played out in the dramatic clashing of one will against another. It is not vanity in an historian to look for the historical origin of the tale of Troy or of the vengeance of Gudrun; but no result in either case can greatly affect the intrinsic relations of the various elements within the poems. The relations of Achilles to his surroundings in the Iliad, of Attila and Erman- aric to theirs, are freely conceived by the several poets, SECT. II 27 EPIC AND ROMANCE 1 an are intelligible at once, without reference to any- thing outside the poems. To require of the poetry of an heroic age that it shall recognise the historical meaning and importance of the events in which it originates, and the persons whose names it uses, is entirely to mistake the nature of it. Its nature is to find or make some drama played by kings and heroes, and to let the historical framework take care of itself. The connexion of epic poetry with history is real, and it is a fitting subject for historical inquiry, but it lies behind the scene. The epic poem is cut loose and set free from history, and goes on a way of its own Epic magnificence and the dignity of heroic poetry may thus be only indirectly derived from such greatness or magnificence as is known to true prosaic history. The heroes, even if they can be identified as historical, may retain in epic nothing of their historical character, except such qualities as fit them be great actions. Their conduct in epic poetry may ry far unlike their actual demeanour in true history; their greatest works may be thrust into a corner of the epic, or barely alluded to, or left out altogether. Their greatness in epic may be quite a different kind o greatness from that of their true history; and where there are many poems belonging to the same ycle there may be the greatest discrepancy among he views taken of the same hero by different authors, nd all the views may be alike remote from the prosaic or scientific view. There is no constant or self- consistent opinion about the character of Charles the 28 .P. I EPIC AND ROMANCE C in ge, Emperor in old French poetry: there is one view the Chanson de Roland, another in the Pèlerin another in the Coronemenz Loois: none of the opinions is anything like an elaborate or detailed historical judgment. Attila, though he loses his political importance and most of his historical acqui- sitions in the Teutonic heroic poems in which he appears, may retain in some of them his ruthless hess and strength; at other times he may be a wise and peaceful king. All that is constant, or common, in the different poetical reports of him, is that he was great. What touches the mind of the poet out of the depths of the past is nothing but the tradition, undefined, of something lordly. This vagueness of tradition does not imply that tradition is impotent or barren; only that it leaves all the execution, the growth of detail, to the freedom of the poet. He is bound to the past, in one way; it is laid upon him to tell the stories of the great men of his own race. in those stories, as they come to him, what is mot lively is not a set and established series of incidents, true or false, but something to which the standards of truth and falsehood are scarcely applicable; something stirring him up to admiration, a compulsion or - influence upon him requiring him to make the story again in his own way; not to interpret history, but to make a drama of his own, filled somehow with passion and strength of mind. It does not matter in what particular form it may be represented, so long as in some form or other the power of the national glory is allowed to pass into his work. But EPIC AND ROMANCE 29 vagueness and generality in the relation of poetry to the historical events and persons of bic age is of course quite a different thing from ness in the poetry itself. Gunther and Attila, and Charlemagne, in poetry, are very vaguely sted with their antitypes in history; but that hot prevent them from being characterised ly, if it should agree with the poet's taste or thin his powers to have it so. The strange thing is that this vague relation should be so necessary to heroic poetry; that it should be im- possible at any stage of literature or in any way by taking thought to make up for the want of it. The place of Gunther the Burgundian, Sigfred the Frank, and Attila the Hun, in the poetical stories of the Niblung treasure may be in one sense acci- dental. The fables of the treasure with a curse upon it, the killing of the dragon, the sleeping princess, the wavering flame, are not limited to this particular course of tradition, and, further, the traditional motives of the Niblung story have varied enormously not only in different countries, but in one and the same language at the same time. The story is never told alike by two narrators; what is common and essential in it is nothing palpable or fixed, but goes from poet to poet "like a shadow from dream to dream." And the historical names are apparently unessential; yet they remain. To look for the details of the Niblung story in the sober history of the Goths and Huns, Burgundians and Franks, is like the vanity confessed by the author of the Roman de 30 EPIC AND ROMANCE Rou, when he went on a sentimental journ Broceliande, and was disappointed to find ther the common daylight and nothing of the Nevertheless it is the historical names, and the associations about them, that give to the N story, not indeed the whole of its plot, but its te its pride and glory, its heroic and epic characte Heroic poetry is not, as a rule, greatly indebt historical fact for its material. The epic poet not keep record of the great victories or the great disasters. He cannot, however, live without the ideas and sentiments of heroism that spring up naturally in periods like those of the Teutonic migrations. In this sense the historic Gunther and Attila are necessary to the Niblung story. The wars and fightings of generation on generation went to create the heroism, the loftiness of spirit, expressed in the Teutonic epic verse. The plots of the stories may be commonplace, the common property of all popular tales. The temper is such as is not found everywhere, but only in historical periods of great energy. The names of Ermanaric and Attila correspond to hardly anything of literal history in the heroic poems; but they are the sign of conquests and great exploits that have gone to form character, though their details are forgotten. It may be difficult to appreciate and understand in detail this vague relation of epic poetry to the national life and to the renown of the national heroes, but the general fact is not less positive or less capable of verification than the date of the battle of Châlons, or 十 ​j EPIC AND ROMANCE 31 e series of the Gothic vowels. All that is needed to prove this is to compare the poetry of a national cycle with the poetry that comes in its place when the national cycle is deserted for other heroes. The secondary or adopted themes may be treated with so much of the manner of the original poetry as to keep little of their foreign character. The rhetoric, the poetical habit, of the original epic may be retained. As in the Saxon poem on the Gospel history, the Helian the twelve disciples may be represented as Thanes owing loyalty to their Prince, in common poetic terms befitting the men of Beowulf or Byrhtnoth. As in the French poems on Alexander the Great, Alexander may become a feudal king, and take over completely all that belongs to such a rank. There may be no consciousness of any need for a new vocabulary or a new mode of expression to fit the foreign themes. In France, it is true, there is a general distinction of form between the Chansons de Geste and the romances; though to this there are exceptions, themes not French, and themes not purely heroic, being represented in the epic form. In the early Teutonic poetry there is no distinction of versification, vocabulary, or rhetoric between the original and the secondary narrative poems; the alliterative verse belongs to both kinds equally. Nor is it always the case that subjects derived from books or from abroad are handled with less firmness than the original and traditional plots. Though sometimes a prevailing affection for imported stories, for Celtic or Oriental legend, may be accompanied by a relaxa- 32 I EPIC AND ROMANCE CHAPI tion in the style, the superiority of national o foreign subjects is not always proved by greater strength or eloquence. Can it be said that the Anglo-Saxon Judith, for instance, is less heroic, less strong and sound, than the somewhat damaged and motley accoutrements of Beowulf? T The difference is this, that the more original and native kind of epic has immediate association with all that the people know about themselves, with all their customs, all that part of their experience ich no one can account for or refer to any particular source. A poem like Beowulf can play directly on a thousand chords of association; the range of its appeal to the minds of an audience is almost unlimited; on no side is the poet debarred from freedom of movement, if only he remember first of all what is due to the hero. He has all the life of his people to strengthen him. A poem like the Heliand is under an obligation to a literary original, and cannot escape from this restriction. It makes what use it can of the native associations, but with whatever perseverance the author may try to bend his story into harmony with the laws of his own country, there is an untranslated residue of foreign ideas. Whatever the defects or excesses of Beowulf may be, the characters are not distressed by any such unsolved contradiction as in the Saxon Heliand, or in the old English Exodus, or Andreas, or the other poems taken from the Bible or the lives of saints. They have not, like the personages of the second order of poems, been translated from one realm of SECT. II 33 EPIC AND ROMANCE ideas to another, and made to take up burdens and offices not their own. They have grown naturally in the mind of a poet, out of the poet's knowledge of human nature, and the traditional ethical judgments of which he is possessed. The comparative freedom of Beowulf in its relation to historical tradition and traditional ethics, and the the comparative limitation of the Heliand, are not in themselves conditions of either advantage or inferi- ority. They simply mark the difference between two types of narrative poem. To be free and comprehen- sive in relation to history, to summarise and represent in epic characters the traditional experience of an heroic age, is not the proper virtue of every kind of poetry, though it is proper to the Homeric kind. The freedom that belongs to the Iliad and the Odyssey is also shared by many a dismal and inter- minable poem of the Middle Ages. of the Middle Ages. That foreign or literary subjects impose certain limitations, and interfere with the direct use of matter of experience in poetry, is nothing against them. The Anglo-Saxon Judith, which is thus restricted as compared with Beowulf, may be more like Milton for these restrictions, if it be less like Homer. Exemption from them is not a privilege, except that it gives room for the attainment of a certain kind of excellence, the Homeric kind; as, on the other hand, it excludes the possibility of the literary art of Virgil or Milton. The relation of epic poetry to its heroic age is not to be found in the observance of any strict historical duty. It lies rather in the epic capacity for bringing D 34 CHAP. I EPIC AND ROMANCE together all manner of lively passages from the general experience of the age, in a story about famous heroic characters. The plot of the story gives unity and harmony to the composition, while the variety of its matter is permitted and justified by the dramatic variety of the characters and their interests. By its comprehensiveness and the variety of its substance, which are the signs and products of its dramatic imagination, epic poetry of the heroic age is distinguished from the more abstract kinds of narrative, such as the artificial epic, and from all kinds of imagination or fancy that are limited in their scope. In times when "the Epic Poem" was a more attractive, if not more perilous theme of debate than it now is, there was a strong controversy about the proper place and the proper kind of miraculous details to be admitted. The question was debated by Tasso in his critical writings, against the strict and pedantic imitators of classical models, and with a strong partiality for Ariosto against Trissino. Tasso made less of a distinction between romance and epic than was agreeable to some of his successors in criticism; and the controversy went on for genera- tions, always more or less concerned with the great Italian heroic poems, Orlando and Jerusalem. Some record of it will be found in Dr. Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance (1762). If the controversy has any interest now, it must be because it provided the most extreme statements of abstract literary principles, which on account of their thoroughness SECT. II 35 EPIC AND ROMANCE are interesting. From the documents it can be ascer- tained how near some of the critics came to that worship of the Faultless Hero with which Dryden in his heroic plays occasionally conformed, while he guarded himself against misinterpretation in his prefaces. The epic poetry of the more austere critics was devised according to the strictest principles of dignity and sublimity, with a precise exclusion of everything "Gothic" and romantic. Davenant's Preface to Gondibert-"the Author's Preface to his much Honour'd friend, Mr. Hobs"--may show how the canon of epic was understood by poets who took things seriously; "for I will yield to their opinion, who permit not Ariosto, no, not Du Bartas, in this eminent rank of the Heroicks; rather than to make way by their admission for Dante, Marino, and others.' "" It is somewhat difficult to find a common measure for these names, but it is clear that what is most distasteful to the writer, in theory at any rate, is variety. Epic is the most solemn, stately, and frigid of all kinds of composition. This was the result attained by the perverse following of precepts supposed to be classical. The critics of the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries were generally right in distinguishing between Epic and Romance, and generally wrong in separating the one kind from the other as opposite and mutually exclusive forms, instead of seeing with Tasso, in his critical discourses, that romance may be included in epic. Against the manifold perils of the Gothic fantasy they set 36 CHAP. I EPIC AND ROMANCE up the image of the Abstract Hero, and recited the formulas of the decorous and symmetrical abstract heroic poem. They were occasionally troubled by the "Gothic" elements in Homer, of which their adversaries were not slow to take advantage. The One of the most orthodox of all the formalists, who for some reason came to be very much quoted in England, Bossu, in his discourse on the Epic Poem, had serious difficulties with the adventures of Ulysses, and his stories told in Phaeacia. episodes of Circe, of the Sirens, and of Polyphemus, are machines; they are also not quite easy to understand. "They are necessary to the action, and yet they are not humanly probable." But see how Homer gets over the difficulty and brings back these machines to the region of human probability. "Homère les fait adroitement rentrer dans la Vraisem- blance humaine par la simplicité de ceux devant qui il fait faire ses récits fabuleux. Il dit assez plaisam- ment que les Phéaques habitoient dans une Isle éloignée des lieux où demeurent les hommes qui ont de l'esprit. εἶσεν δ' ἐν Σχερίῃ ἕκας ἀνδρῶν ἀλφηστάων. Ulysses les avoit connus avant que de se faire connoître à eux: et aiant observé qu'ils avoient toutes les qualités de ces fainéans qui n'admirent rien avec plus de plaisir que les aventures Roman- esques: il les satisfait par ces récits accommodez à leur humeur. Mais le Poëte n'y a pas oublié les Lecteurs raisonnables. Il leur a donné en ces Fables tout le plaisir que l'on peut tirer des véritez Morales, si agréablement déguisées sous ces miracu- 1 SECT. II 37 EPIC AND ROMANCE leuses allégories. C'est ainsi qu'il a réduit ces Machines dans la vérité et dans la Vraisemblance Poëtique." "" 1 Although the world has fallen away from the severity of this critic, there is still a meaning at the bottom of his theory of machines. He has at any rate called attention to one of the most interesting parts of Epic, and has found the right word for the episodes of the Phaeacian story of Odysseus. Romance is the word for them, and Romance is at the same time one of the constituent parts and one of the enemies of epic poetry. That it was dangerous was seen by the academical critics. They provided against it, generally, by treating it with contempt and proscribing it, as was done by those French critics who were offended by Ariosto and perplexed by much of the Gothic machinery of Tasso. They did not readily admit that epic poetry is as complex as the plays of Shakespeare, and as incongruous as these in its composition, if the different constituents be taken out separately in the laboratory and then compared. Romance by itself is a kind of literature that does not allow the full exercise of dramatic imagination ; a limited and abstract form, as compared with the fulness and variety of Epic; though episodes of romance, and romantic moods and digressions, may have their place, along with all other human things, in the epic scheme. 1 Traité du Poëme Épique, par le R. P. Le Bossu, Chanoine Régulier d Sainte Geneviève; MDCLXXV (p. 166). 1675 38 CHAP. I EPIC AND ROMANCE The difference between the greater and the lesser kinds of narrative literature is vital and essential, whatever names may be assigned to them. In the one kind, of which Aristotle knew no other examples than the Iliad and the Odyssey, the personages are made individual through their dramatic conduct and their speeches in varying circumstances; in the other kind, in place of the moods and sentiments of a multitude of different people entering into the story and working it out, there is the sentiment of the Lauthor in his own person; there is one voice, the voice of the story-teller, and his theory of the characters is made to do duty for the characters themselves. There may be every poetic grace, except that of dramatic variety; and wherever, in narrative, the independence of the characters is merged in the sequence of adventures, or in the beauty of the landscape, or in the effusion of poetic sentiment, the narrative falls below the highest order, though the art be the art of Ovid or of Spenser. The romance of Odysseus is indeed "brought into conformity with poetic verisimilitude," but in a different way from that of Bossu On the Epic Poem. It is not because the Phaeacians are romantic in their tastes, but because it belongs to Odysseus, that the Phaeacian night's entertainment has its place in the Odyssey. The Odyssey is the story of his home- coming, his recovery of his own. The great action of the drama of Odysseus is in his dealings with Penelope, Eumaeus, Telemachus, the suitors. The Phaeacian story is indeed episodic; the interest of SECT. II 39 EPIC AND ROMANCE It those adventures is different from that of the meeting with Penelope. Nevertheless it is all kept in harmony with the stronger part of the poem. is not pure fantasy and "Faerie," like the voyage of Maelduin or the vigil in the castle of Busirane. Odysseus in the house of Alcinous is not different from Odysseus of the return to Ithaca. The story is not pure romance, it is a dramatic monologue ; and the character of the speaker has more part than the wonders of the story in the silence that falls on the listeners when the story comes to an end. In all early literature it is hard to keep the story within limits, to observe the proportion of the Odyssey between strong drama and romance. The history of the early heroic literature of the Teutonic tongues, and of the epics of old France, comes to an end in the victory of various romantic schools, and of various restricted and one-sided forms of narrative. From within and without, from the resources of native mythology and superstition, and from the fascination of Welsh and Arabian stories, there came the temptation to forget the study of character, and to part with an inheritance of tragic fables, for the sake of vanities, wonders, and splendours among which character and the tragic motives lost their pre-eminent interest and their old authority over poets and audience. III ROMANTIC MYTHOLOGY "" BETWEEN the dramatic qualities of epic poetry and the myths and fancies of popular tradition there must inevitably be a conflict and a discrepancy. The greatest scenes of the Iliad and the Odyssey have little to do with myth. Where the characters are most vividly realised there is no room for the lighter kinds of fable; the epic "machines are superfluous. Where all the character of Achilles is displayed in the interview with Priam, all his generosity, all his passion and unreason, the imagina- tion refuses to be led away by anything else from looking on and listening. The presence of Hermes, Priam's guide, is forgotten. Olympus cannot stand against the spell of words like those of Priam and Achilles; it vanishes like a parched scroll. In the great scene in the other poem where the disguised Odysseus talks with Penelope, but will not make himself known to her for fear of spoiling his plot, there is just as little opportunity for any interven- tion of the Olympians. "Odysseus pitied his wife as she wept, but his eyes were firm as horn or steel, SECT. III 4I ROMANTIC MYTHOLOGY unwavering in his eyelids, and with art he concealed his tears."1 A In passages like these the epic poet gets clear away from the cumbrous inheritance of traditional fancies and stories. In other places he is inevitably less strong and self-sustained; he has to speak of the gods of the nation, or to work into his large composition some popular and improbable histories. The result in Homer is something like the result in Shakespeare, when he has a more than usually childish or old-fashioned fable to work upon. story like that of the Three Caskets or the Pound of Flesh is perfectly consistent with itself in its original popular form. It is inconsistent with the form of elaborate drama, and with the lives of people who have souls of their own, like Portia or Shylock. Hence in the drama which uses the popular story as its ground-plan, the story is never entirely reduced into conformity with the spirit of the chief characters. The caskets and the pound of flesh, in despite of all the author's pains with them, are imperfectly harmonised; the primitive and barbarous imagination in them retains an inconvenient power of asserting its discordance with the principal parts of the drama. Their unreason is of no great consequence, yet it is something; it is not quite kept out of sight. The epic poet, at an earlier stage of literature 1 αὐτὰρ Οδυσσεύς θυμῷ μὲν γοόωσαν εὴν ἐλέαιρε γυναίκα, ὀφθαλμοὶ δ᾽ ὡς εἰ κέρα ἕστασαν ἠὲ σίδηρος ἀτρέμας ἐν βλεφάροισι· δόλῳ δ᾽ ὅ γε δάκρυα κεῦθεν. Od. xix. 209. L > to 42 CHAP. I EPIC AND ROMANCE 1 than Shakespeare, is even more exposed to this difficulty. Shakespeare was free to take his plots where he chose, and took these old wives' tales at his own risk. The epic poet has matter of this sort forced upon him. In his treatment of it, it will be found that ingenuity does not fail him, and that the transition from the unreasonable or old-fashioned part of his work to the modern and dramatic part is THE NORTHERN GROUP In comparing the English and the Northern poems, it should be borne in mind that the documents of the Northern poetry are hardly sufficient evidence of the condition of Northern epic at its best. The English documents are fragmentary, indeed, but at least they belong to a time in which the heroic poetry was attractive and well appreciated; as is proved by the wonderful freshness of the Maldon poem, late though it is. The Northern poems seem to have lost their vogue and freshness before they came to be collected and written down. They were imperfectly remembered and reported; the text of them is broken and confused, and the gaps are made up with prose explanations. The fortunate preservation of a second copy of Volospá, 108 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC in Hauk's book, has further multiplied labours and perplexities by a palpable demonstration of the vanity of copiers, and of the casual way in which the strophes of a poem might be shuffled at random in different texts; while the chief manuscript of the poems itself has in some cases double and incongruous versions of the same passage.' The Codex Regius contains a number of poems that can only be called epic in the widest and loosest sense of the term, and some that are not epic in any sense at all. The gnomic verses, the mythological summaries, may be passed over for the present; whatever illustrations they may afford of early beliefs and ideas, they have no evidence to give concerning the proportions of stories. Other poems in the collection come under the denomination of epic only by a rather liberal extension of the term to include poems which are no more epic than dramatic, and just as much the one as the other, like the poems of Frey's Wooing and of the earlier exploits of Sigurd, which tell their story altogether by means of dialogue, without any narrative passages at all. The links and explanations are supplied, in prose, in the manuscript. Further, among the poems which come nearer to the English form of narrative poetry there is the very greatest variety of scale. The amount of story told in the Northern poems may vary indefinitely within the widest limits. Some poems contain little 1 Cf. C.P.B., i. p. 375, for double versions of part of Hamðismál, and of the Lay of Helgi. On pp. 377-379, parts of the two texts of Volospá-R and H-are printed side by side for comparison. SECT. II 109 LAY OF WELAND more than an idyll of a single scene; others may give an abstract of a whole history, as the whole Volsung story is summarised, for instance, in the Prophecy of Gripir. Some of the poems are found in such a confused and fragmentary form, with interruptions and inter- polations, that, although it is possible to make out the story, it is hardly possible to give any confident judgment about the original proportions of the poems. This is particularly the case with the poems of which the hero bears the name of Helgi. The difficulties of these were partly appreciated, but not solved, by the original editor. The differences of scale may be illustrated by the following summary description, which aims at little more than a rough measurement of the stories, for purposes of comparison with Beowulf and Waldere. The Lay of Weland gives a whole mythical history. How Weland and his brother met with the swan- maidens, how the swan-brides left them in the ninth year, how Weland Smith was taken prisoner by King Nidad, and hamstrung, and set to work for the king; and of the vengeance of Weland. There are one hundred and fifty-nine lines, but in the text there are many defective places. The Lay is a ballad history, beginning at the beginning, and ending, not with the end of the life of Weland, nor with the adventures of his son Widia, but with the escape of Weland from the king, his enemy, after he had killed the king's sons and put shame on the king's daughter Bodvild. IIO CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC In plan, the Lay of Weland is quite different from the lays of the adventures of Thor, the Prymskviða and the Hymiskviða, the songs of the Hammer and the Cauldron. These are chapters, episodes, in the history of Thor, not summaries of the whole matter, such as is the poem of Weland. The stories of Helgi Hundingsbane, and of his namesakes, as has been already remarked, are given in a more than usually complicated and tangled form. At first everything is simple enough. A poem of the life of Helgi begins in a way that promises a mode of narrative fuller and less abrupt than the Lay of Weland. It tells of the birth of Helgi, son of Sigmund; of the coming of the Norns to make fast the threads of his destiny; of the gladness and the good hopes with which his birth was welcomed. Then the Lay of Helgi tells, very briefly, how he slew King Hunding, how the sons of Hunding made claims for recompense. "But the prince would make no payment of amends; he bade them look for no payment, but for the strong storm, for the grey spears, and for the rage of Odin." And the sons of Hunding were slain as their father had been. 1 Then the main interest begins, the story of Helgi and Sigrun. "A light shone forth from the Mountains of Flame, and lightnings followed." There appeared to Helgi, 1 Cf. Maldon, 1. 45 sq., "Hearest thou what this people answer? They will pay you, for tribute, spears, the deadly point, the old swords, the weapons of war that profit you not," etc. SECT. II III THE HELGI POEMS in the air, a company of armed maidens riding across the field of heaven; "their armour was stained with blood, and light went forth from their spears." Sigrun from among the other "ladies of the South" answered Helgi, and called on him for help; her father Hogni had betrothed her, against her will, to Hodbrodd, son of Granmar. Helgi summoned his men to save her from this loathed wedding. The battle in which Helgi slew his enemies and won the lady of the air is told very shortly, while disproportionate length is given to an interlude of vituperative dialogue between two heroes, Sinfiotli, Helgi's brother, and Gudmund, son of Granmar, the warden of the enemy's coast; this passage of Vetus Comoedia takes up fifty lines, while only six are given to the battle, and thirteen to the meeting of Helgi and Sigrun afterwards. Here ends the poem which is described in Codex Regius as the Lay of Helgi (Helgakviða). The story is continued in the next section in a disorderly way, by means of ill-connected quotations. The original editor, whether rightly or wrongly, is quite certain that the Lay of Helgi, which ends with the victory of Helgi over the unamiable bridegroom, is a different poem from that which he proceeds to quote as the Old Lay of the Volsungs, in which the same story is told. In this second version there is at least one interpolation from a third; a stanza from a poem in the "dialogue measure," which is not the measure in which the rest of the story is told. It is uncertain what application was meant to be given to the title Old Lay of the Volsungs, and whether I12 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC the editor included under that title the whole of his second version of Helgi and Sigrun. For instance, he gives another version of the railing verses of Sinfiotli, which he may or may not have regarded as forming an essential part of his Old Volsung Lay. He distinguishes it at any rate from the other Flyting," which he definitely and by name ascribes to Helgakviða. (C It is in this second version of the story of Helgi that the tragedy is worked out. Helgi slays the father of Sigrun in his battle against the bridegroom's kindred Sigrun's brother takes vengeance. The space is scant enough for all that is told in it; scant, that is to say, in comparison with the space of the story of Beowulf; though whether the poem loses, as poetry, by this compression is another matter. It is here, in connexion with the second version, that the tragedy is followed by the verses of the grief of Sigrun, and the return of Helgi from the dead; the passage of mystery, the musical close, in which the tragic idea is changed into something less distinct than tragedy, yet without detriment to the main action. Whatever may be the critical solution of the textual problems of these Lays, it is impossible to get out of the text any form of narrative that shall resemble the English mode. Even where the story of Helgi is slowest, it is quicker, more abrupt, and more lyrical even than the Lay of Finnesburh, which is the quickest in movement of the English poems. SECT. II 113 THE HELGI POEMS ļ The story of Helgi and Sigrun is intelligible, and though incomplete, not yet so maimed as to have lost its proportions altogether. Along with it, however, in the manuscript there are other, even more difficult fragments of poems about another Helgi, son of Hiorvard, and his love for another Valkyria, Swava. And yet again there are traces of a third Helgi, with a history of his own. The editors of Corpus Poeticum Boreale have accepted the view of the three Helgis that is indicated by the prose passages of the manuscript here; namely, that the different stories are really of the same persons born anew, "to go through the same life-story, though with varying incidents." 1 Helgi and Swava, it is said, were born again," is the note in the manuscript. "There was a king named Hogni, and his daughter was Sigrun. She was a Valkyria and rode over air and sea; she was Swava born again." And, after the close of the story of Sigrun, "it was a belief in the old days that men were born again, but that is now reckoned old wives' fables. Helgi and Sigrun, it is reported, were born anew, and then he was Helgi Haddingjaskati, and she Kara, Halfdan's daughter, as is told in the songs of Kara, and she was a Valkyria. 66 "" It is still possible to regard the "old wives' fable" (which is a common element in Celtic legend and elsewhere) as something unessential in the poems of Helgi; as a popular explanation intended to reconcile different myths attaching to the name. However that may be, the poems of Helgi and Swava are so 1 C.P.B., i. p. 130. I 114 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC fragmentary and confused, and so much has to be eked out with prose, that it is impossible to say what the complete form and scale of the poetical story may have been, and even difficult to be certain that it was ever anything else than fragments. As they stand, the remains are like those of the story of Angantyr; prominent passages quoted by a chronicler, who gives the less important part of the story in prose, either because he has forgotten the rest of the poem, or because the poem was made in that way to begin with. Of the poem of Kara, mentioned in the manuscript, there is nothing left except what can be restored by a conjectural transference of some verses, given under the name of Helgi and Sigrun, to this third myste- rious plot. The conjectures are supported by the reference to the third story in the manuscript, and by the fact that certain passages which do not fit in well to the story of Helgi and Sigrun, where they are placed by the collector, correspond with prose passages in the late Icelandic romance of Hromund Greipsson, in which Kara is introduced. The story of Helgi and Swava is one that covers a large period of time, though the actual remnants of the story are small. It is a tragedy of the early Elizabethan type described by Sir Philip Sidney, which begins with the wooing of the hero's father and mother. The hero is dumb and nameless from his birth, until the Valkyria, Swava, meets him and gives him his name, Helgi; and tells him of a magic sword in an island, that will bring him victory. ¹ C.P.B., Introduction, p. lxxviii. SECT. II 115 THE HELGI POEMS The tragedy is brought about by a witch who drives Hedin, the brother of Helgi, to make a foolish boast, an oath on the Boar's head (like the vows of the Heron or the Peacock, and the gabs of the Paladins of France) that he will wed his brother's bride. Hedin confesses his vanity to Helgi, and is forgiven, Helgi saying, "Who knows but the oath may be fulfilled? I am on my way to meet a challenge." Helgi is wounded mortally, and sends a message to Swava to come to him, and prays her after his death to take Hedin for her lord. The poem ends with two short energetic speeches of Swava refusing to have any love but Helgi's; and of Hedin bidding farewell to Swava as he goes to make amends, and avenge his brother. These fragments, though their evidence tells little regarding epic scale or proportions, are, at least, illustrations of the nature of the stories chosen for epic narrative. The character of Hedin, his folly and magnanimity, is in strong contrast to that of Dag, the brother of Sigrun, who makes mischief in the other poem. The character of Swava is a fainter repetition of Sigrun. Nothing very definite can be made out of any of the Helgi poems with regard to the conventions of scale in narrative; except that the collector of the poems was himself in difficulties in this part of his work, and that he knew he had no complete poem to offer his readers, except perhaps the Helgakviða. The poem named by the Oxford editors "The Long Lay of Brunhild" (i. p. 293) is headed in the L 116 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC v¥ *s' ཀསར་ཏཱh {ihknnAtte¢« manuscript "Qviða Sigurþar," Lay of Sigurd, and referred to, in the prose gloss of Codex Regius, as "The Short Lay of Sigurd." "Short" in this place appears to denote the summary character of the poem; there is no other evident reason for it. This is one of the most important of the Northern heroic lays, in every respect; and, among other reasons, as an example of definite artistic calculation and study, a finished piece of work. It shows the difference between the Northern and the Western standards of epic measurement. The poem is one that gives the whole of the tragedy in no longer space than is used in the poem of Maldon for the adventures of a few hours of battle. There are 288 lines, not all complete. There are many various modes of representation in the poem. The beginning tells the earlier story of Sigurd and Brynhild in twenty lines :— It was in the days of old that Sigurd, the young Volsung, the slayer of Fafni, came to the house of Giuki. He took the troth-plight of two brothers; the doughty heroes gave oaths one to another. They offered him the maid Gudrun, Giuki's daughter, and store of treasure; they drank and took counsel together many a day, Child Sigurd and the sons of Giuki; until they went to woo Brynhild, and Sigurd the Volsung rode in their company; he was to win her if he could get her. The Southern hero laid a naked sword, a falchion graven, between them twain; nor did the Hunnish king ever kiss her, neither take her into his arms; he handed the young maiden over to Giuki's son. She knew no guilt in her life, nor was any evil found in her when she died, no blame in deed or thought. The grim Fates came between.' 1 "It was the Fates that worked them ill." This 1 From C.P.B., i. pp. 293, 294, with some modifications. SECT. II 117 SIGURD AND BRYNHILD. sententious close of the prologue introduces the main story, chiefly dramatic in form, in which Brynhild persuades Gunnar to plan the death of Sigurd, and Gunnar persuades Hogni. It is love for Sigurd, and jealousy of Gudrun, that form the motive of Brynhild. Gunnar's conduct is barely intelligible; there is no explanation of his compliance with Brynhild, except the mere strength of her importunity. Hogni is reluctant, and remembers the oaths sworn to Sigurd. Gothorm, their younger brother, is made their instrument,—he was "outside the oaths." The slaying of Sigurd by Gothorm, and Sigurd's dying stroke that cuts his slayer in two, are told in the brief manner of the prologue to the poem; likewise the grief of Gudrun. Then comes Sigurd's speech to Gudrun before his death. The principal part of the poem, from line 118 to the end, is filled by the storm in the mind of Brynhild her laughter at the grief of Gudrun, her confession of her own sorrows, and her preparation for death; the expostulations of Gunnar, the bitter speech of Hogni,-"Let no man stay her from her long journey"; the stroke of the sword with which Brynhild gives herself the death-wound; her dying prophecy. In this last speech of Brynhild, with all its vehemence, there is manifest care on the part of the author to bring out clearly his knowledge of the later fortunes of Gudrun and Gunnar. The prophecy includes the birth of Swanhild, the marriage of Attila and Gudrun, the death of Gunnar at the hands of Attila, by reason of the love between Gudrun and 118 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC Oddrun; the vengeance of Gudrun on Attila, the third marriage of Gudrun, the death of Swanhild among the Goths. With all this, and carrying all this burden of history, there is the passion of Brynhild, not wholly obscured or quenched by the rhetorical ingenuity of the poet. For it is plain that the poet was an artist capable of more than one thing at a time. He was stirred by the tragic personage of Brynhild; he was also pleased, intellectually and dis- passionately, with his design of grouping together in one composition all the events of the tragic history. The poem is followed by the short separate Lay (forty-four lines) of the Hell-ride of Brynhild, which looks as if it might have been composed by the same or another poet, to supply some of the history wanting at the beginning of the Lay of Brynhild. Brynhild, riding Hell-ward with Sigurd, from the funeral pile where she and Sigurd had been laid by the Giuking lords, is encountered by a giantess who forbids her to pass through her "rock-built courts," and cries shame upon her for her guilt. Brynhild answers with the story of her evil fate, how she was a Valkyria, punished by Odin for disobedience, set in the ring of flame, to be released by none but the slayer of Fafni; how she had been beguiled in Gunnar's wooing, and how Gudrun cast it in her teeth. This supplies the motive for the anger of Brynhild against Sigurd, not clearly expressed in the Lay, and also for Gunnar's compliance with her jealous appeal, and Hogni's consent to the death of Sigurd. While, in the same manner as in the Lay, the formalism and pedantry of SECT. II 119 BRYNHILD the historical poet are burnt up in the passion of the heroine. "Sorrow is the portion of the life of all men and women born: we two, I and Sigurd, shall be parted no more for ever." The latter part of the Lay, the long monologue of Brynhild, is in form like the Lamentation of Oddrun and the idyll of Gudrun and Theodoric; though, unlike those poems, it has a fuller narrative introduction: the monologue does not begin until the situation has been explained. On the same subject, but in strong contrast with the Lay of Brynhild, is the poem that has lost its beginning in the great gap in Codex Regius. It is commonly referred to in the editions as the Frag- mentary Lay of Sigurd ("Brot af Sigurðarkviðu "); in the Oxford edition it is styled the "Fragment of a short Brunhild Lay." There are seventy-six lines (incomplete) beginning with the colloquy of Gunnar and Hogni. Here also the character of Brynhild is the inspiration of the poet. But there does not seem to have been in his mind anything like the historical) anxiety of the other poet to account for every incident, or at least to show that, if he wished, he could account for every incident, in the whole story. It is much stronger in expression, and the conception of Brynhild is more dramatic and more imaginative, though less eloquent, than in the longer poem. The phrasing is short and emphatic :- Gudrun, Giuki's daughter, stood without, and this was the first word she spoke: "Where is Sigurd, the king of men, that my brothers are riding in the van?" Hogni made answer to her words: "We have hewn Sigurd asunder with 120 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC the sword; ever the grey horse droops his head over the dead king." Then spake Brynhild, Budli's daughter: "Have great joy of your weapons and hands. Sigurd would have ruled everything as he chose, if he had kept his life a little longer. It was not meet that he should so rule over the host of the Goths and the heritage of Giuki, who begat five sons that delighted in war and in the havoc of battle." Brynhild laughed, the whole house rang: "Have long joy of your hands and weapons, since ye have slain the valiant king.” ¹ 66 The mood of Brynhild is altered later, and she weeps at that she had laughed at." She wakens before the day, chilled by evil dreams. 'It was cold in the hall, and cold in the bed," and she had seen in her sleep the end of the Niblungs, and woke, and reproached Gunnar with the treason to his friend. It is difficult to estimate the original full compass of this fragmentary poem, but the scale of its narrative and its drama can be pretty clearly understood from what remains. It is a poem with nothing superfluous in it. The death of Sigurd does not seem to have been given in any detail, except for the commentary spoken by the eagle and the raven, prophetic of the doom of the Niblungs. The mystery of Brynhild's character is curiously recognised by a sort of informal X chorus. It is said that "they were stricken silent as she spoke, and none could understand her bearing, that she should weep to speak of that for which she had besought them laughing." It is one of the simplest forms in narrative; but in this case the simplicity of the rhetoric goes along with some variety 1 From C.P.B., i. p. 307, with some changes. SECT. II 121 GUDRUN AND ATLI 7 and subtlety of dramatic imagination. The character of the heroine is rightly imagined and strongly rendered, and her change of mind is impressive, as the author plainly meant it to be. The Lay of Attila (Atlakviða) and the Greenland poem of Attila (Atlamál) are two poems which have a common subject and the same amount of story: how Attila sent for Gunnar and Hogni, the brothers of Gudrun, and had them put to death, and how Gudrun took vengeance on Attila. In the Atlakviða there are 174 lines, and some broken places; in Atlamál there are 384 lines; its narrative is more copious than in most of the Norse Lays. There are some curious discrepancies in the matter of the two poems, but these hardly affect the scale of the story. The difference between them in this respect is fairly represented by the difference in the number of their lines. The scenes of the history are kept in similar proportions in both poems. The story of Gudrun's vengeance has been seen (p. 96) to correspond, as far as the amount of action is concerned, pretty closely with the story of Hengest and Finn. The epic unity is preserved; and, as in the Finnesburh story, there is a distribution of interest between the wrong and the vengeance,-(1) the death of Hnæf, the death of Gunnar and Hogni ; (2) the vengeance of Hengest, the vengeance of Gudrun, with an interval of dissimulation in each case. The plot of the death of Attila, under all its manifold variations, is never without a certain natural fitness for consistent and well-proportioned narrative. 122 CHAP. 11 TEUTONIC EPIC X None of the Northern poems take any account of the theory that the murder of Sigfred was avenged by his wife upon her brothers. That theory belongs to the Nibelungenlied; in some form or other it was known to Saxo; it is found in the Danish ballad of Grimild's Revenge, a translation or adapta- tion from the German. That other conception of the story may be more full of tragic meaning; the Northern poem of Maldon, which is a simple narrative of a ¹ See pp. 168-180 below. > 124 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC battle, with nothing like the tragic complexity and variety of the story of the vengeance of Gudrun. There is yet another version of the death of Gunnar the Giuking to compare with the two poems of Attila-the Lament of Oddrun (Oddrúnargrátr), which precedes the Atlakvida in the manuscript. The form of this, as well as the plot of it, is wonder- fully different from either of the other two poems. This is one of the epic or tragic idylls in which a passage of heroic legend is told dramatically by one who had a share in it. Here the death of Gunnar is told by Oddrun his mistress, the sister of Attila. This form of indirect narration, by giving so great a dramatic value to the person of the narrator, before the beginning of her story, of course tends to de- preciate or to exclude the vivid dramatic scenes that are common everywhere else in the Northern poems. The character of the speaker leaves too little inde- pendence to the other characters. But in none of the poems is the tragic plot more strongly drawn out than in the seventy lines of Oddrun's story to Borgny. The father of Oddrun, Brynhild, and Attila had destined Oddrun to be the bride of Gunnar, but it was Brynhild that he married. Then came the anger of Brynhild against Sigurd, the death of Sigurd, the death of Brynhild that is renowned over all the world. Gunnar sought the hand of Oddrun from her brother Attila, but Attila would not accept the price of the bride from the son of Giuki. The love of Oddrun was given to Gunnar. "I gave my love to Gunnar as Brynhild should have loved him. We could not SECT. II 125 ODDRUN withstand our love: I kept troth with Gunnar." The lovers were betrayed to Attila, who would not believe the accusation against his sister; "yet no man should pledge his honour for the innocence of another, when it is a matter of love." At last he was per- suaded, and laid a plot to take vengeance on the Niblungs; Gudrun knew nothing of what was in- tended. The death of Gunnar and Hogni is told in five- and-twenty lines:- There was din of the hoofs of gold when the sons of Giuki rode into the Court. The heart was cut out of the body of Hogni; his brother they set in the pit of snakes. The wise king smote on his harp, for he thought that I should come to his help. Howbeit I was gone to the banquet at the house of Geirmund. From Hlessey I heard how the strings rang loud. I called to my handmaidens to rise and go; I sought to save the life of the prince; we sailed across the sound, till we saw the halls of Attila. But the accursed serpent crept to the heart of Gunnar, so that I might not save the life of the king. Full oft I wonder how I keep my life after him, for I thought I loved him like myself. Thou hast sat and listened while I have told thee many evils of my lot and theirs. The life of a man is as his thoughts are. The Lamentation of Oddrun is finished. The Hamoismál, the poem of the death of Erman- aric, is one that, in its proportions, is not unlike the Atlakviða : the plot has been already described (pp. 81-82). The poem of 130 lines as it stands has suffered a good deal. This also is like the story of Hengest and the story of Gudrun in the way the action is proportioned. It began with the slaying of Swanhild, the wrong to Gudrun-this part is lost. It goes on to नी 126 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC the speech of Gudrun to her sons, Sorli and Hamther, and their expedition to the hall of the Goth; it ends with their death. In this case, also, the action must have begun at once and intelligibly, as soon as the motive of the Gothic treachery and cruelty was explained, or even without that explanation, in the more immediate sense of the treachery and cruelty, in the story of Swanhild trampled to death, and of the news brought to Gudrun. Here, also, there is much less expansion of the story than in the English poems; everything is surcharged with meaning. The Old Lay of Gudrun (Guðrúnarkviða in forna), or the tale of Gudrun to Theodoric, an idyll like the story of Oddrun, goes quickly over the event of the killing of Sigurd, and the return of Grani, masterless. Unlike the Lament of Oddrun, this monologue of Gudrun introduces dramatic passages. The meeting of Gudrun and her brother is not merely told by Gudrun in indirect narration; the speeches of Hogni and Gudrun are reported directly, as they might have been in a poem of the form of Atlakvida, or the Lay of Sigurd, or any other in which the poet tells the story himself, without the introduction of an imaginary narrator. The main part of the poem is an account of the way in which Gudrun's mother, Grimhild, compelled her, by a potion of forgetfulness, to lose the thought of Sigurd and of all her woes, and consent to become the wife of Attila. This part is well prefaced by the quiet account of the life of Gudrun in her widowhood, before Grimhild began her schemes; how Gudrun SECT. II 127 IDYLLS OF THE HEROINES lived in the house of Half, with Thora, daughter of Hakon, in Denmark, and how the ladies spent their time at the tapestry frame, working pictures of the heroes, the ships of Sigmund, the ranks of Hunnish warriors. In the manuscript there are found at the end of the Old Lay of Gudrun, as if they were part of it, some verses which have been separated from it by the editors (C.P.B., i. 347) as a "Fragment of an Atli Lay." They came from a poem of which the design, at any rate, was the same as that of the Old Lay, and Gudrun is the speaker. She tells how, after the death of Gunnar and Hogni, she was wakened by Atli, to listen to his evil dreams, foreboding his doom, and how she interpreted them in a way to comfort him and put him off his guard. In English poetry there are instances of stories introduced dramatically, long before the pilgrimage to Canterbury. In Beowulf there are various episodes where a story is told by one of the persons engaged. Besides the poem of Hengest chanted in Heorot, there is Beowulf's own narrative of his adventures, after his return to his own people in the kingdom of the Gauts, and passages still nearer in form to the Lament of Oddrun and the Confession of Gudrun are the last speech of Beowulf before his death (2426-2537), and the long speech of Wiglaf (2900-3027) telling of the enmity of the Gauts and the Swedes. But those are not filled with dramatic pathos to the same degree as these Northern Heroides, the monologues of Oddrun and Gudrun. The Lay of Gudrun (Gudrúnarkviða) which 128 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC comes in the manuscript immediately before the Lay of Sigurd, is a pure heroic idyll. Unlike most of its companions, it leaves the details of the Volsung story very much in neglect, and brings all its force to bear on the representation of the grief of the queen, contrasted with the stormy passion of Brynhild. It is rightly honoured for its pathetic imagination of the dumb grief of Gudrun, broken up and dissolved when her sister draws away the covering from the face of Sigurd. "But fire was kindled in the eyes of Brynhild, daughter of Budli, when she looked upon his wounds." The refrain of the poem increases its resemblance to the form of a Greek idyll. The verse is that of narrative poetry; the refrain is not purely lyrical and does not come in at regular intervals. The Tregrof Guðrúnar, or Chain of Woe, restored by the Oxford editors out of the most confused part of the original text, is pure lamentation, spoken by Gudrun before her death, recounting all her sorrows: the bright hair of Swanhild trampled in the mire; Sigurd slain in his bed, despoiled of victory; Gunnar in the court of the serpents; the heart of Hogni cut out of his living body-" Saddle thy white steed and come to me, Sigurd; remember what we promised to one another, that thou wouldst come from Hell to seek me, and I would come to thee from the living world." The short poem entitled Qviða Guðrúnar in the manuscript, the Ordeal of Gudrun in the English edition, is distinctly episodic. The subject is the calumny which was brought against Gudrun by SECT. II 129 NORTHERN DIALOGUES Herkja, the cast-off mistress of Attila, that "she had seen Gudrun and Theodoric together"; and the ordeal of water by which Gudrun proved her innocence, while the falsehood was brought home to Herkja, the bondwoman. The theme is slighter and simpler than all the rest, and this poem, at least, might be reckoned not unfit to be taken up as a single scene in a long epic. Some of the Northern poems in the epic measure are almost wholly made up of dialogue. The story of Balder's Doom is a dialogue between Odin and the witch whom he raises from the dead. The earlier part of the story of Sigurd in the "Elder Edda" is almost all dialogue, even where the narrative measure is employed. There is hardly any mere narrative in the poems remaining of the cycle of Angantyr. In several other cases, the writer has only given, perhaps has only remembered clearly, the dramatic part of the poems in which he was interested; the intervals of the story he fills up with prose. It is difficult to tell where this want of narrative connexion in the poetry is original, and where it is due to forgetfulness or ignorance; where the prose of the manuscripts is to be taken as standing in the place of lost narrative verses, and where it fills a gap that was never intended to be filled with verse, but was always left to the reciter, to be supplied in his own way by passages of story-telling, between his chantings of the poetic dialogue of Hervor and the Shepherd, for instance, or of Hervor and Angantyr. K ·130 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC The poems just mentioned are composed in narrative measure. There are also other dialogue poems in a measure different from this, and peculiarly adapted to dialogues, the measure of the gnomic Hávamál and of the didactic mythological poems, Vafþrúðnismál, Alvíssmál, Grímnismál. These pieces are some distance removed from epic or ballad poetry. But there are others in this gnomic measure which it is not easy to keep far apart from such dialogue poems as Balder's Doom, though their verse is different. By their peculiar verse they are distinguished from the English and Saxon heroic poetry; but they retain, for all their peculiar metre and their want of direct narrative, some of the characteristics of Teutonic epic. The Lokasenna has a plot, and represents drama- tically an incident in the history of the gods. The chief business is Loki's shameless rehearsal of accusa- tions against the gods, and their helpless rejoinders. It is a masque of the gods, and not a ballad like the Winning of Thor's Hammer. It is not, however, a mere string of "flytings" without a plot; there is some plot and action. It is the absence of Thor that gives Loki courage to browbeat the gods; the return of Thor at the end of the poem avenges the gods on their accuser. In the strange poem of the Railing of Thor and Harbard, and in a very rough and irregular kind of verse, there is a similar kind of plot. The Contention of Atli and Rimgerd the Giantess is a short comic dialogue, interposed among the frag- SECT. II 131 DIALOGUES IN GNOMIC VERSE ments of the poem of Helgi Hiorvard's son, and marked off from them by its use of the dialogue verse, as well as by its episodic plot. Helgi Hiorvard's son had killed the giant Hati, and the giant's daughter comes at night where Helgi's ships are moored in the firth, and stands on a rock over them, challenging Helgi and his men. Atli, keeping watch on deck, answers the giantess, and there is an exchange of gibes in the old style between them. Helgi is awakened and joins in the argument. It is good comedy of its kind, and there is poetry in the giantess's description of the company of armed maidens of the air whom she has seen keeping guard over Helgi's ships-"three nines of maids, but one rode foremost, a white maid, enhelmed. Their rearing horses shook dew from their manes into the deep dales, and hail upon the lofty woods; thence come fair seasons among men. But the whole sight was hateful to me" (C.P.B., i. p. 154). The giantess is kept there by the gibes of Atli till the daybreak. "Look eastward, now, Rimgerd!" And the giantess is turned into stone, a great harbour mark, to be laughed at. In some other poems there is much more action, and much more need for an interpreter to act as chorus in the intervals between the dialogues. The story of the wooing of Gerd is in this form: how Frey sat in the seat of Odin and saw a fair maid in Jotunheim, and got great sickness of thought, till his swain Skirnir found the cause of his languishing, and went to woo Gerd for him in Gymi's Garth. Another 132 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC love-story, and a story not unlike that of Frey and Gerd, is contained in the two poems Grógaldr and Fiölsvinnsmál, that tell of the winning of Menglad by her destined lover. These two latter poems are not in Codex Regius, and it was only gradually that their relation to one another was worked out, chiefly by means of the Danish ballad which contains the story of both to- gether in the right order. In the first, Svipdag the hero comes to his mother's grave to call on her for counsel. He has been laid under a mysterious charge, to go on a quest which he cannot understand, "to find out Menglad," and Menglad he has never heard of, and does not know where she is to be found. The second poem, also in dialogue, and in the dialogue measure, gives the coming of Svipdag to the mysterious castle, and his debate with the giant who keeps the gate. For Menglad is the princess whose story is told everywhere, and under a thousand names,—the lady of a strange country, kept under a spell in a witch's castle till the deliverer comes. The wooing of Gerd out of Jotunheim is another version of the same story, which in different forms is one of the oldest and most universal everywhere, the fairy story of the princess beyond the sea. The second dialogue is very much encumbered by the pedantries of the giant who keeps the gate; it ends, however, in the recognition of Svipdag and Menglad. Menglad says: "Long have I sat waiting for thee, many-a-day; but now is that befallen that SECT. II 133 DIALOGUES IN GNOMIC VERSE I have sought for, and thou art come to my bower. Great was the sorrow of my waiting; great was thine, waiting for the gladness of love. Now it is very truth for us the days of our life shall not be sundered." The same form is used in the older poems of Sigurd, those that come before the hiatus of the great manuscript, and have been gathered together in the Oxford edition under the title of the Old Play of the Wolsungs. They touch briefly on all the chief points of the story of the Niblung hoard, from the capture and ransom of Andvari to the winning of the warrior maiden Sigrdrifa by Sigurd. All these last-mentioned dialogue poems, in spite of their lyric or elegiac measure, are like the narra- tive poems in their dependence upon traditional, mythic, or heroic stories, from which they choose their themes. They are not like the lyrical heroic poems of Widsith and Deor in Anglo-Saxon literature, which survey a large tract of heroic legend from a point of vantage. Something of this sort is done by some of the Norse dialogue poems, Vafprúðnismál, etc., but in the poems of Frey and Gerd, of Svipdag and Menglad, and of the Niblung treasure, though this reflective and comparative method occasionally makes itself evident, the interest is that of the story. They have a story to represent, just as much as the narrative poems, though they are debarred from the use of narrative. It must be confessed that there is an easily de- tected ambiguity in the use of the term epic in 134 CHAP. IF TEUTONIC EPIC application to the poems, whether German, English, or Northern, here reviewed. That they are heroic poems cannot be questioned, but that they are epic in any save the most general sense of the term is not quite clear. They may be epic in character, in a general way, but how many of them have a claim to the title in its eminent and special sense? Most of them are short poems; most of them seem to be wanting in the breadth of treatment, in the amplitude of substance, that are proper to epic poetry. Beowulf, it may be admitted, is epic in the sense that distinguishes between the longer narrative poem. ‹ and the shorter ballad. The fragments of Waldere are the fragments of a poem that is not cramped for room, and that moves easily and with sufficient eloquence in the representation of action. The nar- rative of the Maldon poem is not pinched nor meagre in its proportions. Hardly any of the other poems, however, can be compared with these in this respect. These are the most liberal in scale of all the old Teutonic poems; the largest epic works of which we know anything directly. These are the fullest in composition, the least abstract or elliptical; and they still want something of the scale of the Iliad. The poem of Maldon for instance corresponds not to the Iliad, but to the action of a single book, such as the twelfth, with which it has been already compared. If the story of the English Waldere, when com- plete, was not more elaborate than the extant Latin Waltharius, it must have come far short of the pro- portions of Homer. It is a story for a single recitation, SECT. II 135 SCALE OF THE POEMS like the story of Finnesburh in Beowulf. The poem of Beowulf may have more in it than the story of Walter and Hildegund, but this advantage would seem to be gained at the expense of the unity of the poem. It is lengthened out by a sequel, by the addition of a new adventure which requires the poet to make a new start. In the poem of Hildebrand there is a single tragedy contained in a single scene. It is briefly rendered, in a style evidently more primitive, less expansive and eloquent, than the style of Beowulf or Waldere. Even if it had been given in a fuller form, the story would still have been essentially a short one; it could not well have been longer than the poem of Sohrab and Rustum, where the theme is almost the same, while the scale is that of the classical epic. M If the old English epic poetry falls short of the Homeric magnitude, it almost equally exceeds the scale of the Northern heroic poems. If Beowulf and Waldere seem inadequate in size, the defect will not be made good out of the Northern lays of Helgi or Sigfred. For The Northern poems are exceedingly varied in their plan and disposition, but none of them is long, and many of them are in the form of dramatic lyric, with no place for pure narrative at all; such are the poems of Frey's Wooing, of Svipdag and Menglad, and others, in which there is a definite plot worked out by means of lyric dialogue. None of them is of anything like the same scale as Beowulf, which is a complex epic poem, or Byrhtnoth, which is an 136 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC episodic poem liberally dealt with and of considerable length. The Teutonic poetry presents itself, at a first view, as the complement of Homer. Here are to be found many of the things that are wanting at the beginning of Greek literary history. Here are single epic lays, or clusters of them, in every form. Here, in place of the two great poems, rounded and complete, there is the nebulous expanse of heroic tradition, the outline of an heroic cycle, together with a number of episodic poems taking their origin from one point or another of the cycle, according as the different parts of the story happen to catch the imagination of a poet. Instead of the Homeric scale of epic there are a number of brief epic tragedies, the plots of which are chosen from the multitude of stories current in tradition. Among these shorter epic poems, if such they may be called, there are to be distinguished great varieties of procedure in regard to the amount of action repre- sented in the poem. There is one class of poem that represents a single action with some detail; there is another that represents a long and complex story in a summary and allusive way. The first kind may be called episodic in the sense that it takes up about the same quantity of story as might make an act in a play; or perhaps, with a little straining of the term, as much as might serve for one play in a trilogy. The second kind is not episodic; it does not seem fitted for a place in a larger composition. It is a SECT. II 137 SCALE OF THE POEMS kind of short and summary epic, taking as large a province of history as the Iliad or the Odyssey. Hildebrand, the Fight at Finnesburh, Waldere, Byrhtnoth, the Winning of the Hammer, Thor's Fishing, the Death of the Niblungs (in any of the Northern versions), the Death of Ermanaric, might all be fairly regarded as belonging to the first kind of story; while the Lay of Weland and the Lay of Brynhild cover a much larger extent of story, though not of actual space, than any of those. It is not quite easy to find a common measure for these and for the Homeric poems. One can tell perhaps from Mr. Arnold's poem of Sohrab and Rustum how much is wanting to the Lay of Hilde- brand, and on what scale the story of Hildebrand might have been told if it had been told in the Homeric instead of the archaic German manner. The story of Walter of Aquitaine in the Latin hexameters of Waltharius takes up 1456 lines. Although the author of this Latin poem is something short of Homer, "a little overparted" by the comparison, still his work is designed on the scale of classical epic, and gives approximately the right extent of the story in classical form. But while those stories are com- paratively short, even in their most expanded forms, the story of Weland and the story of Helgi each contains as much as would suffice for the plot of an Odyssey, or more. The Lay of Brynhild is not an episodic poem of the vengeance and the passion of Brynhild, though that is the principal theme. It begins in a summary manner with Sigurd's coming to 138 CHAP. II: TEUTONIC EPIC the house of the Niblungs, the wedding of Sigurd and Gudrun, the wooing of Brynhild for Gunnar; all these earlier matters are taken up and touched on before the story comes to the searchings of heart when the kings are persuaded to kill Sigurd. Then the death of Sigurd is told of, and the rest of the poem is filled with the tragedy of Brynhild and Gudrun; the future history of Gudrun is spoken of prophetically by Brynhild before she throws herself on the funeral pile. Plainly this cannot be considered in the same sense "episodic" as the poem of Thor's fishing for the Midgarth snake. The poems of Thor's fishing and the recovery of the hammer are distinctly fragments of a legendary cycle. The Lay of Brynhild makes an attempt to complete the whole Volsung story from /beginning to end, while giving special importance to one particular incident of it,—the passion of Brynhild after the death of Sigurd. The poems of Attila and the Lay of the Death of Ermanaric are more restricted. It remains true that the great story of the Niblung tragedy was never told at length in the poetical measure used for episodes of it, and for the summary form of the Lay of Brynhild. It should be remem- bered, however, that a poem of the scale of the Nibelungenlied, taking up the whole matter, must go as far beyond the Homeric limit as the Lay of Brynhild falls short of it. From one point of view the shorter episodic poems are more Homeric in their plots than either the summary epics which cover the whole ground, as the Lay of Brynhild attempts to cover it, SECT. II 139 SCALE OF THE POEMS or the longer works in prose that begin at the begin- ning and go on to the end, like the Volsunga Saga. The Iliad and the Odyssey are themselves episodic poems; neither of them has the reach of the Nibe- lungenlied. It should not be forgotten, either, that Aristotle found the Iliad and the Odyssey rather long. The Teutonic poems are not to be despised because they have a narrower orbit than the Iliad. Those among them that contain matter enough for a single tragedy, and there are few that have not as much as this in them, may be considered not to fall far short of the standard fixed by Aristotle for the right amount of action to be contained in an heroic poem. They are too hurried, they are wanting in the classical breadth and ease of narrative; but at any rate they are comprehensible, they observe an epic unity. They do not, like certain of the endless French poetical histories, remind one of the picture of incom- prehensible bulk in Aristotle's Poetics, the animal 10,000 stadia long. Thus, though it is natural at first to imagine that in the old Teutonic poetry one is possessed of such separate lays or ballads as might be the original materials of a larger epic, an epic of the Homeric scale, this impression will hardly remain long after a closer criticism of the workmanship of the poems. Very few of them correspond in the amount of their story to the episodes of the Homeric poems. Many of them contain in a short space the matter of stories more complicated, more tragical, than the story of Achilles. Most of them by their unity and self- 1 140 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC f consistency make it difficult to think of them as absorbed in a longer epic. This is the case not only with those that take in a whole history, like the Lay of Brynhild, but also with those whose plot is com- paratively simple, like Hildebrand or Waldere. It is possible to think of the story of Walter and Hilde- gund as forming part of a larger story of the fortunes of the Huns. It has this subordinate place in the Thidreks Saga. But it is not easy to believe that in such a case it preserves its value. Thidreks Saga is not an epic, though it is made by an agglutination. of ballads. In like manner the tragedy of Hildebrand gains by its isolation from the stories of the other chiefs, Theodoric and Odoacer. The stories of Walter and of Hildebrand, like the story of Hamlet the Dane, are too strong in themselves to form part of a larger composition, without detriment to its unity and harmony. They might be brought in allusively and in a subordinate way, like the story of Thebes and other stories in the Iliad; but that is not the same thing as making an epic poem out of separate lays. So that on all grounds the first impression of the Teutonic epic poetry has to be modified. If ever epic poetry was made by a conglomeration of ballads, it must have had other kinds of material than this. Some of the poems are episodic; others are rather to be described as abridgments of epic than as separate epic scenes. But neither in the one case nor in the other is there to be found the kind of poetry that is required by the hypothesis of composite epic. There are short epics that might conceivably have served as the framework, SECT. II 141 SCALE OF THE POEMS or the ground-plan, of a more elaborate work, contain- ing, like the Lay of Helgi or the Lay of Brynhild, incidents enough and hints of character enough for a history fully worked out, as large as the Homeric poems. If it should be asked why there is so little evidence of any Teutonic attempt to weave together separate lays into an epic work, the answer might be, first, that the separate lays we know are too much separate and individual, too strong in themselves, to be satisfactorily cobbled into a more expansive fabric; and, secondly, that it has not yet been proved that epic poems can be made by process of cobbling. The need of a comprehensive epic of the Niblungs was not imperative. Neither was there any demand in Athens, in the time of Sophocles and Euripides, for a compre- hensive work-a Thebaid, a Roman de Thèbes-to include the plots of all the tragedies of the house of Cadmus. It was not a poet, but a prose journeyman, 7 who did this sort of work in the North, and it was not till the old school of poetry had passed away that the composite prose history of the Volsungs and Niblungs, of Sigmund and Sinfiotli, Sigurd, Brynhild, Gudrun, and Atli, was put together out of the old poems. The old lays, Northern and Western, what- ever their value, have all strong individual characters of their own, and do not easily submit to be regarded as merely the unused materials, waiting for an epic composer who never was born. III EPIC AND BALLAD POETRY THE ballads of a later age have many points of like- ness to such poems as Hildebrand, Finnesburh, Maldon, and the poems of the Northern collection. The two orders of poetry are, however, not to be con- founded. Their affinity indeed is clear. But the older poems in alliterative verse have a character not pos- sessed by the ballads which followed them, and which often repeated the same stories in the later Middle Ages. Even the simplest of the older poems, which is the Lay of Hildebrand, is distinguished by evi- dent signs of dignity from even the most ambitious of the rhyming ballads in any of the tongues. Its rhetoric is of a different order. This is not a question of preferences, but of dis- tinction of kinds. The claim of an epic or heroic rank for the older poems need not be forced into a denial of all the other excellences of the rhyming ballads. Ballad, as the term is commonly used, implies a certain degree of simplicity, and an absence of high poetical ambition. Ballads are for the market-place SECT. III 143 EPIC AND BALLAD POETRY and the "blind crowder," or for the rustic chorus that sings the ballad burden. The wonderful poetical beauty of some of the popular ballads of Scotland and Denmark, not to speak of other lands, is a kind of beauty that is never attained by the great poetical artists; an unconscious grace. The ballads of the Scottish Border, from their first invention to the publication of the Border Minstrelsy, lie far away from the great streams of poetical inspiration. They have little or nothing to do with the triumphs of the poets; the "progress of poesy" leaves them untouched; they learn neither from Milton nor from Pope, but keep a life of their own that has its sources far remote in the past, in quite another tradi- tion of art than that to which the great authors and their works belong. The Teutonic epic poems, the Northern poems at any rate, are ballads in respect of their management. of the plots. The scale of them is not to be distin- guished from the scale of a ballad; the ballads have the same way of indicating and alluding to things and events without direct narrative, without con- tinuity, going rapidly from critical point to point, in their survey of the fable. But there is this great difference, that the style of the earlier epics is ambitious and self-conscious, an aristocratic and accomplished style. The ballads of Clerk Saunders or Sir Patrick Spens tell about things that have been generally forgotten, in the great houses of the country, by the great people who have other things to think about, and, if they take 144 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC : to literature, other models of style. The lay of the fight at Finnesburh, the lays of the death of Attila, were in their time the poems of the king's or the earl's hall; they were at the height of literary accom- plishment in their generation, and their style displays the consciousness of rank. The ballads never had anything like the honour that was given to the older lays. The difference between epic and ballad style comes out most obviously when, as frequently has happened, in Denmark, Iceland, and the Faroes, the poems of the old school have been translated from their epic verse into the "eights and sixes" or some other favourite measure of the common ballads. This has been the case, for instance, with the poem of Thor's Hammer, and the poem of the journey of Svipdag in search of Menglad. In other cases, as in that of the return of Helgi from the dead, it is less certain, though it is probable, that there is a direct relation between the two kinds of poetry, between the old Northern poem of Helgi and the Danish ballad of Sir Aage which has the same story to tell; but a com- parison of the two styles, in a case like this, is none the less possible and justifiable. The poems in the older form and diction, however remote they may be from modern fashions, assert themselves unmistakably to be of an aristocratic and not a popular tradition. The ballads have many things in common with the other poems, but they have lost the grand style, and the pride and solemnity of language. One thing they have retained almost SECT. III 145 EPIC AND BALLAD POETRY 7 invariably. Ballad poetry may be trusted to preserve the sense of the tragic situation. If some ballads. are less strong than others in their rendering of a traditional story, their failure is not peculiar to that kind of composition. Not every ballad-singer, and not every tragic poet, has the same success in the development of his fable. As a rule, however, it- holds good that the ballads are sound in their concep- tion of a story; if some are constitutionally weak or unshapely, and others have suffered from the infirmity of reciters and transcribers, these accidents are not to be counted against the class of poetry to which they belong. Yet, however well the ballads may give the story, they cannot give it with the power of epic; and that this power belongs to the older kind of verse, the verse of the Lay of Brynhild, may be proved with all the demonstration that this kind of argument allows. It is open to any one to say that the grand style is less attractive than the charm of the ballad burdens, that the airy music of the ballads is more appealing and more mysterious than all the eloquence of heroic poetry; but that does not touch the question. The rhetoric of the older poems merely claims to be acknowledged for what it is worth. The Danish ballad of Ungen Sveidal "Child Sveidal,”¹ does not spoil the ancient story which had been given in the older language and older verse of Svipdag and Menglad. But there are different ways of describing how the adventurer comes to the dark Grundtvig, Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, No. 70. See above, p. 132. L J 146 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC tower to rescue the unknown maiden. The ballad uses the common ballad forms, the common easy rhymes and assonances :- Out they cast their anchor All on the white sea sand, And who was that but the Child Sveidal Was first upon the land? His heart is sore with deadly pain For her that he never saw, His name is the Child Sveidal ; So the story goes. This sort of story need not be despised, and it is peculiarly valuable when it appears in the middle of one of the least refreshing seasons of literature, like this ballad in the age of the Lutheran Reformation in Denmark. In such an age and among theological tracts and controversies, the simple ballad measures may bring relief from oppression and desolation; and call for thanks to the Danish ladies by whose care this ballad and so many others were written down. But gratitude need not conceal the truth, that the style of the ballad is unlike the style of an heroic poem. The older poem from which Child Sveidal is derived may have left many poetical opportunities unemployed; it comes short in many things, and makes up for them by mythological irrelevances. But it is composed in a style of which it is impossible to mistake the gravity; it has all the advantage of established forms that have been tested and are able to bear the weight of the poetical matter. There is a vast difference between the simplicity of the ballad SECT. III 147 EPIC AND BALLAD POETRY and the stately measure and rhetorical pomp of the original :- Svipdag is my name; Sunbright was my Father's name : The winds have driven me far, along cold ways; No one can gainsay the word of Fate, Though it be spoken to his own destruction. The difference is as great as the difference between the ballad of the Marriage of Gawayne and the same story as told in the Canterbury Tales; or the difference between Homer's way of describing the recovery of lifted cattle and the ballad of Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodheid. It happens fortunately that one of the Danish ballads, Sivard og Brynild, which tells of the death of Sigurd (Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, No. 3), is one of the best of the ballads, in all the virtues of that style, so that a comparison with the Lay of Brynhild, one of the best poems of the old collection, is not unfair to either of them. The ballad of Sivard, like the Lay of Brynhild, includes much more than an episode; it is a complete tragic poem, indicating all the chief points of the story. The tragic idea is different from that of any of the other versions of the Volsung story, but quite as distinct and strong as any. SIVARD (0 the King's Sons of Denmark!) Sivard has a horse that is fleet, and he has stolen Brynild from the Mountain of Glass, all by the light of day. From the Mountain of Glass he has stolen proud Brynild, and given 148 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC her to Hagen, his brother-in-arms. Brynild and Signild went to the river shore to wash their silken gowns. "Signild, my sister, where got you the golden rings on your hand?"—"The gold rings on my hand I got from Sivard, my own true love; they are his pledge of troth: and you are given to Hagen." When Brynild heard this she went into the upper room and lay there sick there she lay sick and Hagen came to her. "Tell me, maiden Brynild, my own true love, what is there in the world to heal you; tell me, and I will bring it, though it cost all the world's red gold."—"Nothing in the world you can bring me, unless you bring me, into my hands, the head of Sivard.” "And how shall I bring to your hands the head of Sivard? There is not the sword in all the world that will bite upon him : no sword but his own, and that I cannot get."—"Go to his room, and bid him lend you his sword, for his honour, and say, 'I have vowed an adventure for the sake of my true love.' When first he hands you over his sword, I pray you remember me, in the Lord God's name." It is Hagen that has swept his mantle round him, and goes into the upper room to Sivard. "Here you sit, Sivard, my foster-brother; will you lend me your good sword for your honour? for I have vowed a vow for the sake of my love." "And if I lend you my good sword Adelbring, you will never come in battle where it will fail you. My good sword Adelbring you may have, indeed, but keep you well from the tears of blood that are under the hilt, keep you from the tears of blood that are so red.¹ If they run down upon your fingers, it will be your death." Hagen got the sword, and it was his own sworn brother he slew there in the room. He took up the bloody head under his cloak of furs and brought it to proud Brynild. "Here you have the head for which you sought; for the sake of you I have slain my brother, to my undoing."-"Take away the head and let me not see it; nor will I pledge you my troth to make you glad.” "Never will I pledge troth to you, and nought is the glad- ness; for the sake of you I have slain my brother; sorrow is on ¹ Compare the warning of Angantyr to Hervor when he gives her the sword Tyrfing-"Keep the sword sheathed, the slayer of Hialmar; touch not the edges, there is venom upon them"-and the magic sword Skofnung in Kormaks Saga. SECT. III 149 EPIC AND BALLAD POETRY me, sore and great." It was Hagen drew his sword and took the proud Brynild and hewed her asunder. He set the sword against a stone, and the point was deadly in the King's son's heart. He set the sword in the black earth, and the point was death in the King's son's heart.. Ill was the day that maiden was born. For her were spilt the lives of two King's sons. (0 the King's Sons of Denmark ! ) This is a consistent tragic story, and it is well told. It has the peculiar virtue of the ballad, to make things impressive by the sudden manner in which they are spoken of and passed by; in this abrupt mode of narrative the ballads, as has been noted already, are not much different from the earlier poems. The Lay of Brynhild is not much more diffuse than the ballad of Sivard in what relates to the slaying of the hero. Both are alike distinct from the method of Homer; compared with Homer both the lays and the ballads are hurried in their action, over- emphatic, cramped in a narrow space. But when the style and temper are considered, apart from the incidents of the story, then it will appear that the lay belongs to a totally different order of literature from the ballad. The ballad tells of things dimly discerned by the poet; king's sons and daughters are no more to him than they are to the story-tellers of the market-place-forms of a shadowy grandeur, different from ordinary people, swayed by strange motives, not irrationally, nor altogether in a way beyond the calculation of simple audiences, yet in ways for which there is no adequate mode of ex- planation known to the reciter. The ballad keeps instinctively a right outline for its tragic story, but M 150 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC to develop the characters is beyond its power. In the epic Lay of Brynhild, on the other hand, the poet is concerned with passions which he feels himself able to comprehend and to set forth dramatically; so that, while the story of the poem is not very much larger in scale than that of the ballad, the dramatic speeches are greatly elaborated. Brynhild in the lay is not a mere tragic symbol, as in the ballad, but a tragic character. The ballad has the seed of tragedy in it, but in the lay the seed has sprung up in the dramatic eloquence of Brynhild's utterances before her death. The ballad is tragical, but in an abstract manner. The plot of the slighted woman and her vengeance, with the remorse of Hagen, is all true, and not exaggerated in motive. But while the motives are appreciated, it is not in the power of the poet to develop the exposition of them, to make them dramatically characteristic, as well as right in their general nature. It is just this dramatic ideal which is the ambition and inspiration of the other poet; the character of Brynhild bas taken possession of his imagination, and requires to be expressed in character- istic speech. A whole poetical world is open to the poet of Brynhild, and to the other poets of the Northern heroic cycle. They have taken the first day's journey into the empire of Homer and Shake- speare; the forms of poetry that they employ are varied and developed by them so as to express as fully as possible the poetical conception of different individual characters. It is not easy to leave them without the impression that their poetry was capable SECT. III 151 EPIC AND BALLAD POETRY of infinitely greater progress in this direction; that some at least of the poets of the North were "bearers of the torch" in their generation, not less than the poets of Provence or France who came after them and led the imagination of Christendom into another way. That is, it is possible to think of the poets of Sigurd and Brynhild as holding among the Northern nations of the tenth or eleventh century the place that is held in every generation by some set of authors who, for the time, are at the head of intellectual and literary adventure, who hold authority, from Odin or the Muses, to teach their contemporaries one particular kind of song, till the time comes when their vogue is exhausted, and they are succeeded by other masters and other schools. This commission has been held by various kinds of author since the beginning of history, and manifold are the lessons that have been recommended to the world by their authority; now epic, now courtly and idealist lyric, romantic drama, pedantic tragedy, funeral orations, analytical novels. They are not all amusing, and not all their prices are more than the rate of an old song. But they all have a value as trophies, as monuments of what was most important in their time, of the things in which the generations, wise and foolish, have put their trust and their whole soul. The ballads have not this kind of importance; the ballad poets are remote from the lists where the great champions overthrow one an- other, where poet takes the crown from poet. The ballads, by their very nature, are secluded and apart from the great literary enterprises; it is the beauty } 152 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC of them that they are exempt from the proclamations and the arguments, the shouting and the tumult, the dust and heat, that accompany the great literary triumphs, and make epochs for the historians, as in the day of Cléopatre, or the day of Hernani. The ballad has no weight of responsibility upon it; it does not carry the intellectual light of its century; its authors are easily satisfied. In the various ex- amples of the Teutonic alliterative poetry there is recognisable the effort and anxiety of poets who are not content with old forms, who have a poetical vocation to go on and find out new forms, who are on the search for the "one grace above the rest," by which all the chief poets are led. The remains of this poetry are so many experiments, which, in whatever respects they may have failed, yet show the work and energy of authors who are proud of their art, as well as the dignity of men who are familiar with greatness and great actions: in both which respects they differ from the ballad poets. The spell of the popular story, the popular ballad, is not quite the same as theirs. Theirs is more com- manding; they are nearer to the strenuous life of the world than are the simple people who remember, over their fires of peat, the ancient stories of the wanderings of kings' sons. They have outgrown the stage of life for which the fables and old wives' tales are all-sufficient; they have begun to make a differ- ence between fable and characters; they have entered on a way by which the highest poetical victories are attainable. The poetry of the old lays of the SECT. III 153 EPIC AND BALLAD POETRY Volsungs, as compared with popular ballads and tales, is "weighty and philosophical"-full of the results of reflection on character. Nor have they with all this lost the inexplicable magic of popular poetry, as the poems of Helgi and Sigrun, and of the daughter of Angantyr, and others, may easily prove. L IV THE STYLE OF THE POEMS THE style of the poems, in what concerns their verse and diction, is not less distinctly noble than their spirit and temper. The alliterative verse, wherever it is found, declares itself as belonging to an elaborate poetical tradition. The alliterative line is rhetorically capable of a great amount of emphasis; it lends itself as readily as the "drumming decasyllabon" of the Elizabethan style to pompous declamation. Parallel- ism of phrases, the favourite rhetorical device, especi- ally with the old English poets, is incompatible with tenuity of style; while the weight of the verse, as a rule, prevents the richness of phrasing from becoming too extravagant and frivolous.¹ 1 The style of alliterative verse is not monotonous. Without reckoning the forms that deviate from the common epic measure, such as the Northern lyrical staves, there may be found in it as many varieties of style as in English blank verse from the days of Gorboduc onward. In its oldest common form it may be supposed 1 Examples in Appendix, Note A. SECT. IV 155 THE STYLE OF THE POEMS that the verse was not distinctly epic or lyric; lyric rather than epic, lyric with such amount of epic as is proper for psalms of triumph, or for the praise of a king, the kind of verse that might be used for any sort of carmina, such as for marking authorship and ownership on a sword or a horn, for epitaphs or spells, or for vituperative epigrams. In England and the Continent the verse was early adapted for continuous history. The lyrical and gnomic usages were not abandoned. The poems of Widsith and Deor's Lament show how the allusive and lyrical manner of referring to heroic legend was kept up in England. The general tendency, however, seems to have favoured a different kind of poetry. The common form of old English verse is fitted for narrative. The ideal of the poets is one that would have the sense "variously drawn out from one verse to another." When the verse is lyrical in tone, as in the Dream of the Rood, or the Wanderer, the lyrical passion is commonly that of mourning or regret, and the expression is elegiac and diffuse, not abrupt or varied. The verse, whether narrative or elegiac, runs in rhythmical periods; the sense is not "concluded in the couplet." The lines are mortised into one another; by preference, the sentences begin in the middle of a line. The parallelism of the old poetry, and its wealth of paraphrase, encourage de- liberation in the sentences, though they are often interrupted by a short sentence, generally introduced to point a moral. The old Norse poetry, with many likenesses to 156 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC the old English, had a different taste in rhetorical syntax. Instead of the long-drawn phrases of the English poetry, and an arrangement of sentences by which the metrical limits of the line were generally disguised, the Norse alliterative poetry adopted a mode of speech that allowed the line to ring out clearly, and gave full force to the natural emphasis of the rhythm. These two opposite rhetorical tendencies are illus- trated also by the several variations upon the common rhythm that found favour in one region and the other. Where an English or a German alliterative poet wishes to vary from the common metre, he uses the lengthened line, an expansion of the simple line, which, from its volume, is less suitable for pointed expression, and more capable of pathos or solemnity, than the ordinary form of verse. The long line of the Saxon and English poets is not used in the Norse poetry; there the favourite verse, where the ordinary narrative line is discarded, is in the form of gnomic couplets, in which, as in the classical elegiac measure, a full line is succeeded by a truncated or broken rhythm, and with the same effect of clinching the meaning of the first line as is commonly given by the Greek or Latin pentameter. Of this favourite Northern measure there are only one or two casual and sporadic instances in English poetry; in the short dramatic lyric of the Exeter Book, interpreted so ingeniously by Mr. Gollancz, and in the gnomic verses of the same collection. This difference of taste goes very far to explain SECT. IV 157 THE STYLE OF THE POEMS the difference between English and Norse epic; to appreciate the difference of style is to understand the history of the early poetry. It was natural that the more equable form of the English and the Continental German narrative poetry should prove itself fit for extended and continuous epic narrative; it was in- evitable that the Norse intolerance of tame expression, and of everything unimpassioned or unemphatic, should prevent the growth of any of the larger and slower kinds of poetry. The triumphs of alliterative poetry in the first or English kind are the long swelling passages of tragic monologue, of which the greatest is in the Saxon Genesis, the speech of Satan after the fall from heaven. The best of the Northern poetry is all but lyrical; the poem of the Sibyl, the poems of Sigrun, Gudrun, Hervor. The nature of the two forms of poetry is revealed in their respective manners of going wrong. The decline of the old English poetry is shown by an increase of diffuseness and insipidity. The old Norse poetry was attacked by an evil of a different sort, the malady of false wit and over-decoration. The English poetry, when it loses strength and self-control, is prone to monotonous lamentation; the Norse poetry is tempted to overload itself with conceits. In the one there is excess of sentiment, in the other the contrary vice of frigidity, and a premeditated and ostentatious use of figurative expressions. The poem of Beowulf has known the insidious approach and temptation of diffuse poetic melancholy. 158 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC The Northern poems are corrupted by the vanity of metaphor. To evade the right term for everything has been the aim of many poetic schools; it has seldom been attained more effectually than in the poetry of the Norwegian tongue. + Periphrastic epithets are part of the original and common stock of the Teutonic poetry. They form a large part of the vocabulary of common phrases which bear witness to the affinity existing among the remains of this poetry in all the dialects.¹ But this common device was differently applied, in the end, by the two literatures, English and Icelandic, in which the old forms of verse held their ground longest against the rhyming forms. The tendency in England was to make use of the well-worn epithets, to ply the Gradus: the duller kind of Anglo-Saxon poetry is put together as Latin verses are made in school,—an old-fashioned metaphor is all the more esteemed for its age. The poets, and presumably their hearers, are best content with familiar phrases. In Iceland, on the other hand, there was an impatience of the old vocabulary, and a curiosity and search for new figures, that in the complexity and absurdity of its results is not approached by any school of "false wit" in the whole range of literature. Already in the older forms of Northern poetry it is plain that there is a tendency to lyrical emphasis which is unfavourable to the chances of long narrative in verse. Very early, also, there are symptoms of the 1 Compare the index to Sievers's edition of the Heliand for illustrations of this community of poetical diction in old Saxon, English, Norse, and High German; and J. Grimm, Andreas und Elene (1840), pp. xxv.-xliv. SECT. IV 159 THE STYLE OF THE POEMS familiar literary plague, the corruption of metaphor. Both these tendencies have for their result the new school of poetry peculiar to the North and the courts of the Northern kings and earls,-the Court poetry, or poetry of the Scalds, which in its rise and progress involved the failure of true epic. The German and English epic failed by exhaustion in the competition with Latin and Romance literature, though not without something to boast of before it went under. The Northern epic failed, because of the premature develop- ment of lyrical forms, first of all within itself, and then in the independent and rival modes of the Scaldic poetry. 1 The Scaldic poetry, though later in kind than the poems of Codex Regius, is at least as old as the tenth century; the latest of the epic poems, Atlamál (the Greenland poem of Attila), and others, show marks of the influence of Court poetry, and are considerably later in date than the earliest of the Scalds. The Court poetry is lyric, not epic. The aim of the Court poets was not the narrative or the dramatic presentation of the greater heroic legends; it was the elaborate decoration of commonplace themes, such as the praise of a king, by every possible artifice of rhyme and alliteration, of hard and exact construction of verse, and, above all, of far-sought metaphorical allusions. In this kind of work, in the praise of kings alive or dead, the poet was compelled to betake himself to mythology and mythical history, like the 1 See Bidrag til den ældste Skaldedigtnings Historie, by Dr. Sophus Bugge (1894). 160 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC learned poets of other nations with their mythology of Olympus. In the mythology of Asgard were con- tained the stories of precious names and epithets by means of which the poems might be made to glitter and blaze.¹ It was for the sake of poets like these that Snorri wrote his Edda, and explained the mythical references available for the modern poetry of his time, though fortunately his spirit and talent were not limited to this didactic end, nor to the pedan- tries and deadly brilliance of fashionable verse. By the time of Snorri the older kind of poetry had become very much what Chaucer was to the Elizabethan sonneteers, or Spenser to the contemporaries of Pope. It was regarded with some amount of honour, and some condescension, but it had ceased to be the right kind of poetry for a "courtly maker." The Northern poetry appears to have run through some of the same stages as the poetry of Greece, though with insufficient results in most of them. The epic poetry is incomplete, with all its nobility. The best things of the old poetry are dramatic-lyrical monologues, like the song of the Sibyl, and Gudrun's story to Theodoric, or dialogues like those of Helgi and Sigrun, Hervor and Angantyr. Before any adequate large rendering had been accorded to those tragic histories, the Northern poetry, in its impatience of length, had discovered the idyllic mode of expression and the dramatic monologue, in which there was no excuse for weakness and tameness, and, on the contrary, 1 Compare C.P.B., ii. 447, Excursus on the Figures and Metaphors of old Northern Poetry. SECT. IV 161 THE STYLE OF THE POEMS great temptation to excess in emphatic and figurative language. Instead of taking a larger scene and a more complex and longer story, the poets seem to have been drawn more and more to cut short the story and to intensify the lyrical passion of their dialogue or monologue. Almost as if they had known the horror of infinite flatness that is all about the literature of the Middle Ages, as if there had fallen upon them, in that Aleïan plain, the shadow of the enormous beast out of Aristotle's Poetics, they chose to renounce all superfluity, and throw away the make- shift wedges and supports by which an epic is held In this way they did great things, and Volospá (the Sibyl's Prophecy) is their reward. To write out in full the story of the Volsungs and Niblungs was left to the prose compilers of the Volsunga Saga, and to the Austrian poet of the Nibelungenlied. up. The Volospá is as far removed from the courtly odes and their manner and ingenuity as the Marriage Hymn of Catullus from the Coma Berenices. The Volospá, however, has this in common with the mechanical odes, that equally with these it stands apart from epic, that equally with these it fuses epic material into an alien form. The sublimity of this great poem of the Doom is not like the majesty or strength of epic. The voice is not the voice of a teller of stories. And it is here, not in true Northern poetry attains its epic verse, that the height. It is no ignoble form of poetry that is represented by the Sibyl's Song and the Lament of Gudrun. Μ ! 162 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC But it was not enough for the ambition of the poets. They preferred the composition of correct and elaborate poems in honour of great men, with much expenditure of mythology and without passion;' one of the forms of poetry which may be truly said to leave nothing to be desired, the most artificial and mechanical poetry in the world, except possibly the closely-related kinds in the traditional elaborate verse of Ireland or of Wales. It was still possible to use this modern and difficult rhetoric, occasionally, for subjects like those of the freer epic; to choose a subject from heroic tradition and render it in the fashionable style. The Death-Song of Ragnar Lodbrok is the chief of those secondary dramatic idylls. It is marked off by difference of verse, for one thing, from the Hamðismál and the Atlakviða; and, besides this, it has the characteristic of imitative and conventional heroic literature the unpersuasive and unconvincing force of the heroic romance, the rhetoric of Almanzor. The end of the poem is fine, but it does not ring quite true :- The gods will welcome me; there is nothing to bewail in death. I am ready to go; they are calling me home, the maidens whom Odin has sent to call me. With gladness will I drink the ale, set high among the gods. The hours of life are gone over ; laughing will I die. It is not like the end of the sons of Gudrun; it is not of the same kind as the last words of Sorli, 1 These may be found in the second volume of the Corpus Poeticum Boreale. C.P.B., ii. 339. 2 SECT. IV 163 THE STYLE OF THE POEMS which are simpler, and infinitely more imaginative and true:- We have fought; if we die to-day, if we die to-morrow, there is little to choose. No man may speak when once the Fates have spoken (Hamðismál, s.f.). It is natural that the Song of Ragnar Lodbrok should be appreciated by modern authors. It is one of the documents responsible for the conventional Valkyria and Valhalla of the Romantic School, and for other stage properties, no longer new. The poem itself is in spirit rather more nearly related to the work of Tegnér or Oehlenschläger than to the Volospá. It is a secondary and literary version, a "romantic" version of ideas and images belonging to a past time, and studied by an antiquarian poet with an eye for historical subjects.¹ The progress of epic was not at an end in the rise of the new Court poetry that sounded sweeter in the ears of mortals than the old poems of Sigurd and Brynhild. The conceits and the hard correctness of the Scalds did not satisfy all the curiosity or the imagina- tive appetite of their patrons. There still remained a desire for epic, or at least for a larger and freer kind of historical discourse. This was satisfied by the prose histories of the great men of Iceland, of the kings of Norway, and the lords of the Isles; histories the nearest to true epic of all that have ever been spoken without verse. That the chief of all the masters of this art should have been 1 Translated in Percy's Runic Poetry (1763), p. 27, and often since. 164 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC Snorri Sturluson, the exponent and practitioner of the mystery of the Court poets, is among the pleasantest of historical paradoxes. The development of the Court poetry to all extremes of "false wit," and of glaring pretence and artificiality of style, makes the contrast all the more vivid between its brocaded stiffness and the ease and freedom of the Sagas. But even apart from the Court poetry, it is clear that there was little chance for any development of the Northern heroic poetry into an Homeric fulness of detail. In the Norse poetry, as in Greek, the primitive forms of heroic dirges or hymns give place to narrative poetry; and that again is succeeded by a new kind of lyric, in which the ancient themes of the Lament and the Song of Praise are adorned with the new ideas and the new diction of poets who have come to study novelty, and have entered, though with far other arms and accoutrements, on the same course as the Greek lyric authors of dithyrambs and panegyrical odes. In this progress of poetry from the unknown older songs, like those of which Tacitus speaks, to the epic form as it is preserved in the "Elder Edda," and from the epic form to the lyrical form of the Scalds, the second stage is incomplete; the epic form is uncertain and half-developed. The rise of the Court poetry is the most obvious explanation of this failure. The Court poetry, with all its faults, is a completed form which had its day of glory, and even rather more than its share of good fortune. It is the characteristic and successful kind of poetry in SECT. IV 165 THE STYLE OF THE POEMS 7 Iceland and Norway, just as other kinds of elaborate lyric were cultivated, to the depreciation of epic, in Provence and in Italy. It was to the Court poet that the prizes were given; the epic form was put out of favour generations before the fragments of it were gathered together and preserved by the collector from whose books they have descended to the extant manuscripts and the editions of the "Elder Edda.” But at the same time it may be represented that the Court poetry was as much effect as cause of the depreciation of epic. The lyrical strain declared itself in the Northern epic poetry too strongly for any such epic work as either Beowulf or the Heliand. The bent was given too early, and there was no recovery possible. The Court poetry, in its rhetorical brilliance and its allusive phrases, as well as in the hardness and correctness of its verse, is carrying out to completion certain tastes and principles whose influence is manifest throughout the other orders of old Northern poetry; and there is no need to go to the Court poetry to explain the difference between the history of Northern and of English alliterative verse, though it is by means of the Court poetry that this difference may be brought into the strongest light. The contrast between the English liking for continuous discourse and the Norse liking for abrupt emphasis is already to be discerned in the oldest literary documents of the two nations. V THE PROGRESS OF EPIC VARIOUS RENDERINGS OF THE SAME STORY Due (1) to accidents of tradition and impersonal causes : (2) to calculation and selection of motives by the poets, and intentional modification of traditional matter. BEOWULF, as the poem stands, is quite a different sort of thing from the poems in the Copenhagen manuscript. It is given out by its scribes in all the glory of a large poem, handsomely furnished with a prelude, a conclusion, and divisions into several books. It has the look of a substantial epic poem. It was evidently regarded as something considerable, as a work of eminent virtue and respectability. The Northern poems, treasured and highly valued as they evidently were, belong to a different fashion. In the Beowulf of the existing manuscript the fluctuation and variation of the older epic tradition has been controlled by editors who have done their best to establish a text of the poem. The book has an appearance of authority. There is little of this in the Icelandic manuscript. The Northern poems have SECT. V 167 THE PROGRESS OF EPIC evidently been taken as they were found. Imper- fections of tradition, which in Beowulf would have been glossed over by an editorial process, are here left staring at the reader. The English poem pretends to be a literary work of importance-a book, in short; while the Icelandic verses are plainly gathered from all quarters, and in such a condition as to defy the best intentions of the editor, who did his best to understand what he heard, but had no consistent policy of improvement or alteration, to correct the accidental errors and discrepancies of the oral com- munications. Further, and apart from the accidents of this particular book, there is in the poems, even when they are best preserved, a character of fluctuation and uncertainty, belonging to an older and less literary fashion of poetry than that of Beowulf. Beowulf has been regarded by some as a com- posite epic poem made out of older and shorter poems. Codex Regius shows that this hypothesis is dealing with an undoubted vera causa when it talks of short lays on heroic subjects, and of the variations of treatment to be found in different lays on one and the same theme, and of the possibilities of con- tamination. Thus, in considering the story of Beowulf's descent under water, and the difficulties and contradictions of that story as it stands, Ten Brink has been led to suppose that the present text is made up of two independent versions, run together by an editor in a hazardous way without regard to the differences in 168 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC 1 points of detail, which still remain to the annoyance of the careful reader. There is no great risk in the assumption that there were different versions of the fight with Grendel's mother, which may have been carelessly put together into one version in spite of their contradictions. In the Codex Regius there are three different versions of the death of the Niblungs, the Atlakviða, Atlamál, and the Lament of Oddrun. The Lament of Oddrun is vitally different from the other two poems, and these differ from one another, with regard to the motive of Atli's feud with Gunnar. It is possible for the human mind to imagine an editor, a literary man, capable of blending the poems in order to make a larger book. This would be something like the process which Ten Brink has suspected in the composition of this part of Beowulf. It is one thing, however, to detect the possibility of such misdemeanours; and quite another thing to suppose that it is by methods such as these that the bulk of the larger epic is swollen beyond the size of common lays or ballads. It is impossible, at any rate, by any reduction or analysis of Beowulf, to get rid of its stateliness of narrative; it would be impossible by any fusion or aggregation of the Eddic lays to get rid of their essential brevity. No accumu- lation of lays can alter the style from its trick of detached and abrupt suggestions to the slower and more equable mode. That there was a growth of epic among the Teu- tonic nations is what is proved by all the documents. This growth was of the same general kind as the SECT. V 169 THE PROGRESS OF EPIC progress of any of the great forms of literature-the Drama, the Novel. Successive generations of men, speaking the same or similar forms of language, made poetical experiments in a common subject-manner, trying different ways of putting things, and changing their forms of poetry according to local and personal variations of taste; so that the same story might be told over and over again, in different times, with different circumstances. In one region the taste might be all for com- pression, for increase of the tension, for suppression of the tamer intervals in the story. In another it might run to greater length and ease, and favour a gradual explication of the plot. The "Elder Edda" shows that contamination was possible. It shows that there might be frequent independent variations on the same theme, and that, apart from any editorial work, these versions might occasionally be shuffled and jumbled by mere accidents of recollection. Thus there is nothing contrary to the evidence in the theory that a redactor of Beowulf may have had before him different versions of different parts of the poem, corresponding to one another, more or less, as Atlamál corresponds to the Atlakviða. This hypo- thesis, however, does not account for the difference in form between the English and the Northern poems. No handling of the Atlamál or the Atlakviða could produce anything like the appearance of Beowulf. The contaminating editor may be useful as an hypo- thesis in certain particular cases. But the heroic poetry 170 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC got on very well without him, generally speaking. It grew by a free and natural growth into a variety of forms, through the ambitions and experiments of poets. Variety is evident in the poems that lie outside the Northern group; Finnesburh is of a different order from Waldere. It is in the Northern collection, however, that the variety is most evident. There the independent versions of the same story are brought together, side by side. The experiments of the old school are ranged there; and the fact that experiments were made, that the old school was not satisfied with its conventions, is perhaps the most legitimate infer- ence, and one of the most significant, to be made by a reader of the poems. Variations on similar themes are found in all popular poetry; here, again, the poems of the Edda present themselves as akin to ballads. Here again they are distinguished from ballads by their greater degree of ambition and self-consciousness. For it will not do to dismiss the Northern poems on the Volsung story as a mere set of popular varia- tions on common themes. The more carefully they are examined, the less will be the part assigned to chance and imperfect recollection in producing the variety of the poems. The variation, where there are different presentations of the same subject, is not produced by accident or the casual and faulty repeti- tion of a conventional type of poem, but by a poetical ambition for new forms. Codex Regius is an im- perfect monument of a time of poetical energy in which old forms were displaced by new, and old SECT. V 171 THE PROGRESS OF EPIC subjects refashioned by successive poets. As in the Athenian or the English drama the story of Oedipus or of Lear might be taken up by one playwright after another, so in the North the Northern stories were made to pass through changes in the minds of different poets. The analogy to the Greek and the English drama need not be forced. Without any straining of com- parisons, it may be argued that the relation of the Atlamál and Atlakviða is like the relation of Euripides to Aeschylus, and not so much like the variations of ballad tradition, in this respect, that the Atlamál is a careful, deliberate, and somewhat conceited attempt to do better in a new way what has been done before by an older poet. The idylls of the heroines, Brynhild, Gudrun, Oddrun, are not random and unskilled variations; they are considerate and studied poems, expressing new conceptions and imaginations. It is true that this poetry is still, in many respects, in the condition of popular poetry and popular traditional stories. The difference of plot in some versions of the same subject appears to be due to the ordinary causes that produce the variants of popular tales,-defective memory, accidental loss of one point in the story, and change of emphasis in another. To causes such as these, to the common impersonal accidents of tradition, may perhaps be referred one of the strangest of all the alterations in the bearing of a story—the variation of plot in the tradition of the Niblungs. 172 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC In the "Elder Edda" the death of the Niblungs is laid to the charge of Attila; their sister Gudrun does her best to save them; when she fails in this, she takes vengeance for them on her husband. In the German tradition, as in the version known to Saxo, in the Nibelungenlied, in the Danish ballad of Grimild's Revenge (which is borrowed from the Ger- man), the lines are laid quite differently. There it is their sister who brings about the death of the kings; it is the wife of Sigfred, of Sigfred whom they have killed, that exacts vengeance from her brothers Gunther and Hagene. Attila is here put aside. Gudrun's slaughter of her children is unrecorded; there is no motive for it when all her anger is turned against her brothers. This shifting of the centre of a story is not easy to explain. But, whatever the explanation may be, it seems probable that it lies somewhere within the range of popular tradition, that the change is due to some of the common causes of the transformation of stories, and not to a definite and calculated poetical modification. The tragical complications are so many in the story of the Niblungs that there could not fail to be variations in the traditional interpretation of motives, even without the assistance of the poets and their new readings of character. In some of the literary documents there may be found two kinds of variation from an original form of story,-variation due to those popular and indefinite causes, the variation of failing memory, on the one hand; and on the other, variation due to the ambition or conceit of an author with ideas of his own. SECT. V 173 THE PROGRESS OF EPIC A comparison of the Atlakviða, the Atlamál, and the Lamentation of Oddrun may at first suggest that we have here to deal with just such variants as are common wherever stories are handed on by oral tradition. Further consideration will more and more reduce the part allotted to oral maltreatment, and increase the part of intentional and artistic modifica- tion, in the variations of story to be found in these poems. All three poems are agreed in their ignorance of the variation which makes the wife of Sigfred into the avenger of his death. In all three it is Attila who brings about the death of the brothers of Gudrun. It seems to have been a constant part of the traditional story, as known to the authors of these three poems, that Attila, when he had the brothers of Gudrun in his power, gave order to cut out the heart of Hogni, and thereafter to throw Gunnar into the serpents' den. The Atlakviða presents an intelligible explanation of this; the other two poems leave this part of the action rather vague. In the Atlakvida the motive of Attila's original hatred is left at first unexplained, but comes out in the circumstances of the death of the Niblungs. When the Burgundian kings are seized and bound, they are called upon to buy themselves off with gold. It is understood, in Gunnar's reply, that the gold of the Niblung treasure is what is sought for. He asks that the heart of Hogni may be 174 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC brought to him. They bring him, instead, the heart of Hialli, which Gunnar detects at once as the heart of a coward. Then at last the heart of Hogni is cut out and brought to Gunnar; and then he defies the Huns, and keeps his secret. Now is the hoard of the Niblungs all in my keeping alone, for Hogni is dead: there was doubt while we two lived, but now there is doubt no more. Rhine shall bear rule over the gold of jealousy, the eager river over the Niblungs' heritage; the goodly rings shall gleam in the whirling water, they shall not pass to the children of the Huns. Gunnar was thrown among the snakes, and there he harped upon his harp before his death came on him. The end of Gunnar is not told explicitly; the story goes on to the vengeance of Gudrun. In the Oddrúnargrátr there is another motive for Attila's enmity to Gunnar: not the gold of the Niblungs, but the love that was between Gunnar and Oddrun (Oddrun was the sister of Attila and Brynhild). The death of Brynhild is alluded to, but that is not the chief motive. The gold of the Niblungs is not mentioned. Still, however, the death of Hogni precedes the death of Gunnar,-"They cut out the heart of Hogni, and his brother they set in the serpents' close." Gunnar played upon his harp among the serpents, and for a long time escaped them; but the old serpent came out at last and crawled to his heart. It is implied that the sound of his music is a charm for the serpents; but another motive is given by Oddrun, as she tells the story: Gunnar played on his harp for Oddrun, SECT. V 175 THE PROGRESS OF EPIC to be heard by her, so that she should come to help him. But she came too late. It might be inferred from this poem that the original story of the death of Hogni has been im- perfectly recollected by the poet who touches lightly on it and gives no explanation here. It is fairer to sup- pose that it was passed over because it was irrelevant. The poet had chosen for his idyll the love of Gunnar and Oddrun, a part of the story which is elsewhere referred to among these poems, namely in the Long Lay of Brynhild (1. 58). By his choice of this, and his rendering of it in dramatic monologue, he debarred himself from any emphatic use of the motive for Hogni's death. It cannot be inferred from his ex- planation of Gunnar's harp-playing that the common explanation was unknown to him. On the contrary, it is implied here, just as much as in Atlakviða, that the serpents are kept from him by the music, until the old sleepless one gives him his death. But the poet, while he keeps this incident of the traditional version, is not particularly interested in it, except as it affords him a new occasion to return to his main theme of the love story. Gunnar's music is a message to Oddrun. This is an imaginative and dramatic adaptation of old material, not a mere lapse of memory, not a mere loss of the traditional bearings of the story. The third of these poems, the Atlamál, is in some respects the most remarkable of them all. In its plot it has more than the others, at the first reading, the appearance of a faulty recollection; for, while it 176 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC makes a good deal of play with the circumstances of the death of Hogni, it misses, or appears to miss, the point of the story; the motive of Gunnar, which is evident and satisfactory in the Atlakvida, is here suppressed or dropped. The gold of the Niblungs is not in the story at all; the motive of Attila appears to be anger at the death of his sister Brynhild, Gunnar's wife, but his motive is not much dwelt on. It is as if the author had forgotten the run of events. like a blundering minstrel. On the other hand, the poem in its style is further from all the manners of popular poetry, more affected and rhetorical, than any of the other pieces in the book. It is written in the málaháttr, a variety of the common epic measure, with a monotonous cadence; the sort of measure that commends itself to an ambitious and rhetorical poet with a fancy for correct- ness and regularity. The poem has its origin in an admiration for the character of Gudrun, and a desire to bring out more fully than in the older poems the tragic thoughts and passion of the heroine. Gudrun's anxiety for her brothers' safety, and her warning message to them not to come to the Court of the Huns, had been part of the old story. In the Atlakviða she sends them a token, a ring with a wolf's hair twisted round it, which is noticed by Hogni but not accepted by Gunnar. In the Atlamál something more is made of this; her message here is written in runes, and these are falsified on the way by Attila's messenger, so that the warning is at first unread. But the confusion of the runes is detected SECT. V 177 THE PROGRESS OF EPIC by the wife of Hogni, and so the story opens with suspense and forebodings of the doom. The death of Hogni and Gunnar is explained in a new way, and always with the passion of Gudrun as the chief theme. In this story the fight of the Niblungs and the Huns is begun outside the doors of the hall. Gudrun hears the alarm and rushes out with a welcome to her brothers,—" that was their last greeting,”—and a cry of lamentation over their neglect of her runes. Then she tries to make peace, and when she fails in that, takes up a sword and fights for her brothers. It is out of rage and spite against Gudrun, and in order to tame her spirit, that Attila has the heart of Hogni cut out of him, and sends Gunnar to the serpents. All this change in the story is the result of meditation and not of forgetfulness. Right or wrong, the poet has devised his story in his own way, and his motives are easily discovered. He felt that the vengeance of Gudrun required to be more carefully and fully explained. Her traditional character was not quite consistent with the horrors of her revenge. In the Atlamál the character of Gudrun is so conceived as to explain her revenge,-the killing of her children follows close upon her fury in the battle, and the cruelty of Attila is here a direct challenge to Gudrun, not, as in the Atlakvida, a mere incident in Attila's search for the Niblung treasure. The cruelty of the death of Hogni in the Atlakviða is purely a matter of business; it is not of Attila's choosing, and apparently he favours the attempt to save Hogni by the sacrifice of Hialli the feeble man. In N 178 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC the Atlamál it is to save Hogni from Attila that Hialli the cook is chased into a corner and held under the knife. This comic interlude is one of the liveliest passages of the poem. It serves to increase the strength of Hogni. Hogni begs them to let the creature go," Why should we have to put up with his squalling?" It may be observed that in this way the poet gets out of a difficulty. It is not in his design to have the coward's heart offered to Gunnar ; he has dropped that part of the story entirely. Gunnar is not asked to give up the treasure, and has no reason to protect his secret by asking for the death of his brother; and there would be no point in keeping the incident for the benefit of Attila. That Gunnar should first detect the imposture, and should then recognise the heart of his brother, is a fine piece of heroic imagination of a primitive kind. It would have been wholly inept and spiritless to transfer this from Gunnar to Attila. The poet of Atlamál shows that he understands what he is about. The more his work is scrutinised, the more evident becomes the sobriety of his judgment. His dexterity in the disposing of his incidents is proved in every particular. While a first reading of the poem and a first comparison with the story of Atlakviða may suggest the blundering and irresponsible ways of popular reciters, a very little attention will serve to bring out the difference and to justify this poet. He is not an improviser; his temptations are of another sort. He is the poet of a second generation, one of those who make up by energy of intelligence for their SECT. V 179 THE PROGRESS OF EPIC want of original and spontaneous imagination. It is not that he is cold or dull; but there is something wanting in the translation of his thoughts into speech. His metres are hammered out; the pre- cision of his verse is out of keeping with the fury of his tragic purport. The faults are the faults of overstudy, the faults of correctness and maturity. The significance of the Atlamál is considerable in the history of the Northern poetry. It may stand for the furthest mark in one particular direction; the epic poetry of the North never got further than this. If Beowulf or Waldere may perhaps represent the highest accomplishment of epic in old English verse, the Atlamál has, at least, as good a claim in the other language. The Atlamál is not the finest of the old poems. That place belongs, without any question, to the Volospá, the Sibyl's Song of the judgment; and among the others there are many that surpass the Atlamál in beauty. But the Atlamál is com- plete; it is a work of some compass, diligently planned and elaborated. Further, although it has many of the marks of the new rhetoric, these do not change its character as a narrative poem. It is a narrative poem, not a poem of lyrical allusions, not an heroic ode. It is at once the largest and the most harmonious in construction of all the poems. It proves that the change of the Northern poetry, from narrative to the courtly lyric, was a change not made without fair opportunity to the older school to show what it was worth. The variety of the three poems of Attila, ending in the careful rhetoric of the 180 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC Atlamál, is proof sufficient of the labour bestowed by different poets in their use of the epic inheritance. Great part of the history of the North is misread, unless account is taken of the artistic study, the invention, the ingenuity, that went to the making of those poems. This variety is not the con- fusion of barbarous tradition, or the shifts and experi- ments of improvisers. The prosody and the rhetorical furniture of the poems might prevent that misinter- pretation. It might be prevented also by an observa- tion of the way the matter is dealt with, even apart from the details of the language and the style. The proof from these two quarters, from the matter and from the style, is not easily impugned. So the first impression is discredited, and so it appears that the "Elder Edda," for all its appear- ance of disorder, haste, and hazard, really contains a number of specimens of art, not merely a heap of casual and rudimentary variants. The poems of the Icelandic manuscript assert themselves as individual and separate works. They are not the mere makings of an epic, the mere materials ready to the hand of an editor. It still remains true that they are de- fective, but it is true also that they are the work of artists, and of a number of artists with different aims and ideals. The earliest of them is long past the stage of popular improvisation, and the latest has the qualities of a school that has learned more art than is good for it. The defect of the Northern epic is that it allowed itself to be too soon restricted in its scope. It SECT. V 181 THE PROGRESS OF EPIC became too minute, too emphatic, too intolerant of the comfortable dilutions, the level intervals, between the critical moments.¹ It was too much affected by the vanities of the rival Scaldic poetry; it was over- come by rhetoric. But it cannot be said that it went out tamely. 1 There is a natural affinity to Gray's poetry in the Icelandic poetry that he translated-compressed, emphatic, incapable of laxity. VI BEOWULF THE poem of Beowulf has been sorely tried; critics have long been at work on the body of it, to discover how it is made. It gives many openings for theories of agglutination and adulteration. Many things in it are plainly incongruous. The pedigree of Grendel is not authentic; the Christian sentiments and morals are not in keeping with the heroic or the mythical substance of the poem; the conduct of the narrative is not always clear or easy to follow. These difficulties and contradictions have to be explained; the composi- tion of the poem has to be analysed; what is old has to be separated from what is new and adventitious ; and the various senses and degrees of "old" and new" have to be determined, in the criticism of the poem. With all this, however, the poem continues to possess at least an apparent and external unity. It is an extant book, whatever the history of its composi- tion may have been; the book of the adventures of Beowulf, written out fair by two scribes in the tenth century; an epic poem, with a prologue at the begin- ning, and a judgment pronounced on the life of the SECT. VI 183 BEOWULF ; hero at the end; a single book, considered as such by its transcribers, and making a claim to be so considered. Before any process of disintegration is begun, this claim should be taken into account; the poem deserves to be appreciated as it stands. Whatever may be the secrets of its authorship, it exists as a single continuous narrative poem; and whatever its faults may be, it holds a position by itself, and a place of some honour, as the one extant poem of considerable length in the group to which it belongs. It has a meaning and value apart from the questions of its origin and its 'mode of production. Its present value as a poem is not affected by proofs or arguments regarding the way in which it may have been patched or edited. The patchwork theory has no power to make new faults in the poem; it can only point out what faults exist, and draw inferences from them. It does not take away from any dignity the book may possess in its present form, that it has been subjected to the same kind of examination as the Iliad. poem may be reviewed as it stands, in order to find out what sort of thing passed for heroic poetry with the English at the time the present copy of the poem was written. However the result was obtained, Beowulf is, at any rate, the specimen by which the Teutonic epic poetry must be judged. It is the largest monument extant. There is nothing beyond it, in that kind, in respect of size and completeness. If the old Teutonic epic is judged to have failed, it must be because Beowulf is a failure. The ! 184 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC Taking the most cursory view of the story of Beowulf, it is easy to recognise that the unity of the plot is not like the unity of the Iliad or the Odyssey. One is inclined at first to reckon Beowulf along with those epics of which Aristotle speaks, the Heracleids and Theseids, the authors of which "imagined that because Heracles was one person the story of his life could not fail to have unity."1 It is impossible to reduce the poem of Beowulf to the scale of Aristotle's Odyssey without revealing the faults of structure in the English poem :- A man in want of work goes abroad to the house of a certain king troubled by Harpies, and having accomplished the purifica- tion of the house returns home with honour. Long afterwards, having become king in his own country, he kills a dragon, but is at the same time choked by the venom of it. His people lament for him and build his tomb. Aristotle made a summary of the Homeric poem, because he wished to show how simple its construction really was, apart from the episodes. It is impossible, by any process of reduction and simplification, to get J rid of the duality in Beowulf. It has many episodes, quite consistent with a general unity of action, but there is something more than episodes, there is a sequel. It is as if to the Odyssey there had been added some later books telling in full of the old age of Odysseus, far from the sea, at the hands of his son Telegonus. The adventure with the dragon is separate from the earlier adventures. It is only connected with them because the same person is involved in both. 1 Poet. 1451 a. SECT. VI 185 BEOWULF It is plain from Aristotle's words that the Iliad and the Odyssey were in this, as in all respects, above and beyond the other Greek epics known to Aristotle. Homer had not to wait for Beowulf to serve as a foil to his excellence. That was provided in the other epic poems of Greece, in the cycle of Troy, in the epic stories of Theseus and Heracles. It seems probable that the poem of Beowulf may be at least as well knit as the Little Iliad, the Greek cyclic poem of which Aristotle names the principal incidents, con- trasting its variety with the simplicity of the Iliad and Odyssey.¹ Indeed it is clear that the plan of Beowulf might easily have been much worse, that is, more lax and diffuse, than it is. This meagre amount of praise will be allowed by the most grudging critics, if they will only think of the masses of French epic, and imagine the extent to which a French company of poets might have prolonged the narrative of the hero's life-the Enfances, the Chevalerie-before reaching the Death of Beowulf. At line 2200 in Beowulf comes the long interval of time, the fifty years between the adventure at Heorot and the fight between Beowulf and the dragon. Two thousand lines are given to the first story, a thousand to the Death of Beowulf. Two thousand lines are occupied with the narrative of Beowulf's expedition, his voyage to Denmark, his fight with Grendel and 1 τοιγαροῦν ἐκ μὲν Ιλιάδος καὶ 'Οδυσσείας μία τραγῳδία ποιεῖται ἑκατέρας ἢ δύο μόναι· ἐκ δὲ Κυπρίων πολλαὶ καὶ τῆς μικρᾶς Ιλιάδος πλέον ὀκτώ, οἷον ὅπλων κρίσις, Φιλοκτήτης, Νεοπτόλεμος, Ευρύπυλος, πτωχεία, Λάκαιναι, Ιλίου πέρσις, καὶ ἀπόπλους καὶ Σίνων καὶ Τρῳάδες (1459 b). 186 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC Grendel's mother, his return to the land of the Gauts and his report of the whole matter to King Hygelac. In this part of the poem, taken by itself, there is no defect of unity. The action is one, with different parts all easily and naturally included between the first voyage and the return. It is amplified and complicated with details, but none of these introduce any new main interests. Beowulf is not like the Heracleids and Theseids. It transgresses the limits of the Homeric unity, by adding a sequel; but for all that it is not a mere string of adventures, like the bad epic in Horace's Art of Poetry, or the innocent plays described by Sir Philip Sidney and Cervantes. A third of the whole poem is detached, a separate adventure. The first two-thirds taken by themselves form a complete poem, with a single action; while, in the orthodox epic manner, various allusions and explanations are introduced regarding the past history of the personages involved, and the history of other people famous in tradition. The adventure at Heorot, taken by itself, would pass the scrutiny of Aristotle or Horace, as far as concerns the lines of its composition. There is variety in it, but the variety is kept in order and not allowed to interfere or compete with the main story. The past history is disclosed, and the subordinate novels are interpolated, as in the Odyssey, in the course of an evening's conversation in hall, or in some other interval in the action. In the introduction of accessory matter, standing in different degrees of relevance to the main plot, the practice SECT. VI £87 BEOWULF of Beowulf is not essentially different from that of classical epic. In the Iliad we are allowed to catch something of the story of the old time before Agamemnon, the war of Thebes, Lycurgus, Jason, Heracles,—and even of things less widely notable, less of a concern to the world than the voyage of Argo, such as, for instance, the business of Nestor in his youth. In Beowulf, in a similar way, the inexhaustible world outside the story is partly represented by means of allusions and digressions. The tragedy of Finnesburh is sung by the harper, and his song is reported at some length, not merely referred to in passing. The stories of Thrytho, of Heremod, of Sigemund the Walsing, and Fitela his son (Sigmund and Sinfiotli), are introduced like the stories of Lycurgus or of Jason in Homer. They are illustrations of the action, taken from other cycles. The fortunes of the Danish and Gautish kings, the fall of Hygelac, the feuds with Sweden, these matters come into closer relation with the story. They are not so much illustrations taken in from without, as points of attachment between the history of Beowulf and the untold history all round it, the history of the persons concerned, along with Beowulf himself, in the vicissitudes of the Danish and Gautish kingdoms. In the fragments of Waldere, also, there are allusions to other stories. In Waldere there has been lost a poem much longer and fuller than the Lay of Hildebrand, or any of the poems of the "Elder Edda❞—a poem more like Beowulf than any of those 1 188 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC now extant. The references to Weland, to Widia Weland's son, to Hama and Theodoric, are of the same sort as the references in Beowulf to the story of Froda and Ingeld, or the references in the Iliad to the adventures of Tydeus. In the episodic passages of Beowulf there are, curiously, the same degrees of relevance as in the Iliad and Odyssey. Some of them are necessary to the proper fulness of the story, though not essential parts of the plot. Such are the references to Beowulf's swimming- match; and such, in the Odyssey, is the tale told to Alcinous. The allusions to the wars of Hygelac have the same value as the references in the Iliad and the Odyssey to such portions of the tale of Troy, and of the return of the Greek lords, as are not immediately connected with the anger of Achilles, or the return of Odysseus. The tale of Finnesburh in Beowulf is purely an interlude, as much as the ballad of Ares and Aphrodite in the Odyssey. Many of the references to other legends in the Iliad are illustrative and comparative, like the passages about Heremod or Thrytho in Beowulf. "Ares suffered when Otus and Ephialtes kept him in a brazen vat, Hera suffered and Hades suffered, and were shot with the arrows of the son of Amphitryon" (Il. v. 385). The long parenthetical story of Heracles in a speech of Agamemnon (П. xx. 98) has the same irrelevance of association, and has incurred the same critical suspicions, as the contrast of Hygd and SECT. VI 189 BEOWULF Thrytho, a fairly long passage out of a wholly different story, introduced in Beowulf on the very slightest of suggestions. Thus in Beowulf and in the Homeric poems there are episodes that are strictly relevant and consistent, filling up the epic plan, opening out the perspective of the story; also episodes that without being strictly relevant are rightly proportioned and subordinated, like the interlude of Finnesburh, decoration added to the structure, but not overloading it, nor interfering with the design; and, thirdly, episodes that seem to be irrelevant, and may possibly be interpolations. All these kinds have the effect of increasing the mass as well as the variety of the work, and they give to Beowulf the character of a poem which, in dealing with one action out of an heroic cycle, is able, by the way, to hint at and partially represent a great number of other stories. It is not in the episodes alone that Beowulf has an advantage over the shorter and more summary poems. The frequent episodes are only part of the general liberality of the narrative. The narrative is far more cramped than in Homer; but when compared with the short method of the Northern poems, not to speak of the ballads, it comes out as itself Homeric by contrast. It succeeds in representing pretty fully and continuously, not by mere allusions and implications, certain portions of heroic life and action. The principal actions in Beowulf are curiously trivial, taken by themselves. All around them are 190 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC the rumours of great heroic and tragic events, and the scene and the personages are heroic and magni- ficent. But the plot in itself has no very great poetical value; as compared with the tragic themes of the Niblung legend, with the tale of Finnesburh, or even with the historical seriousness of the Maldon poem, it lacks weight. The largest of the extant poems of this school has the least important sub- ject-matter; while things essentially and in the abstract more important, like the tragedy of Froda and Ingeld, are thrust away into the corners of the poem. In the killing of a monster like Grendel, or in the killing of a dragon, there is nothing particularly interesting; no complication to make a fit subject for epic. Beowulf is defective from the first in respect of plot. The story of Grendel and his mother is one that has been told in myriads of ways; there is nothing commoner, except dragons. The killing of dragons and other monsters is the regular occupation of the heroes of old wives' tales; and it is difficult to give individuality or epic dignity to commonplaces of this sort. This, however, is accomplished in the poem of Beowulf. Nothing can make the story of Grendel dramatic like the story of Waldere or of Finnesburh. But the poet has, at any rate, in connexion with this simple theme, given a rendering, consistent, adequate, and well-proportioned, of certain aspects of life and certain representative characters in an heroic age. SECT. VI 191 BEOWULF The characters in Beowulf are not much more than types; not much more clearly individual than the persons of a comedy of Terence. In the shorter Northern poems there are the characters of Brynhild and Gudrun; there is nothing in Beowulf to compare with them, although in Beowulf the personages are consistent with themselves, and intelligible. Hrothgar is the generous king whose qualities were in Northern history transferred to his nephew Hrothulf (Hrolf Kraki), the type of peaceful strength, a man of war living quietly in the intervals of war. Beowulf is like him in magnanimity, but his character is less uniform. He is not one of the more cruel adventurers, like Starkad in the myth, or some of the men of the Icelandic Sagas. But he is an adventurer with something strange and not altogether safe in his disposition. His youth was like that of the lubberly younger sons in the fairy stories. "They said that he was slack." Though he does not swagger like a Berserk, nor "gab" like the Paladins of Charlemagne, he is ready on provocation to boast of what he has done. The pathetic sentiment of his farewell to Hrothgar is possibly to be ascribed, in the details of its rhetoric, to the common affection of Anglo-Saxon poetry for the elegiac mood; but the softer passages are not out of keeping with the wilder moments of Beowulf, and they add greatly to the interest of his character. He is more variable, more dramatic, than the king and queen of the Danes, or any of the secondary personages. Wealhtheo, the queen, represents the poetical idea 192 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC of a noble lady. There is nothing complex or strongly dramatic in her character. Hunferth, the envious man, brought in as a foil to Beowulf, is not caricatured or exaggerated. His sourness is that of a critic and a politician, disinclined to accept newcomers on their own valuation. He is not a figure of envy in a moral allegory. In the latter part of the poem it is impossible to find in the character of Wiglaf more than the general and abstract qualities of the "loyal servitor." Yet all those abstract and typical characters are introduced in such a way as to complete and fill up the picture. The general impression is one of variety and complexity, though the elements of it are simple enough. With a plot like that of Beowulf it might seem that there was danger of a lapse from the more serious kind of heroic composition into a more trivial kind. Certainly there is nothing in the plain story to give much help to the author; nothing in Grendel to fascinate or tempt a poet with a story made to his hand. The plot of Beowulf is not more serious than that of a thousand easy-going romances of chivalry, and of fairy tales beyond all number. The strength of what may be called an epic tradition is shown in the superiority of Beowulf to the temptations of cheap romantic commonplace. Beowulf, the hero, is, after all, something different from the giant-killer of popular stories, the dragon- slayer of the romantic schools. It is the virtue and SECT. VI 193 BEOWULF the triumph of the poet of Beowulf that when all is done the characters of the poem remain distinct in the memory, that the thoughts and sentiments of the poem are remembered as significant, in a way that is not the way of the common romance. Although the incidents that take up the principal part of the scene of Beowulf are among the commonest in popular stories, it is impossible to mistake the poem for one of the ordinary tales of terror and wonder. The essential part of the poem is the drama of characters; though the plot happens to be such that the characters are never made to undergo a tragic ordeal like that of so many of the other Teutonic stories. It is not incorrect to say of the poem of Beowulf that the main story is really less important to the imagination than the accessories by which the characters are defined and distinguished. It is the defect of the poem this should be so. There is a constitutional weakness in it. Although the two stories of Beowulf are both commonplace, there is a difference between the story of Grendel and the story of the dragon. The story of the dragon is more of a commonplace than the other. Almost every one of any distinction, and many quite ordinary people in certain periods of history have killed dragons; from Hercules and Bellerophon to Gawain, who, on different occasions, narrowly escaped the fate of Beowulf; from Harald Hardrada (who killed two at least) to More of More Hall who killed the dragon of Wantley. The latter part of Beowulf is a tissue of common- 0 194 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC places of every kind: the dragon and its treasure; the devastation of the land; the hero against the dragon; the defection of his companions; the loyalty of one of them; the fight with the dragon; the dragon killed, and the hero dying from the flame and the venom of it; these are commonplaces of the story, and in addition to these there are commonplaces of sentiment, the old theme of this transitory life that "fareth as a fantasy," the lament for the glory passed away; and the equally common theme of loyalty and treason in contrast. Everything is commonplace, while everything is also magnificent in its way, and set forth in the right epic style, with elegiac passages here and there. Everything is commonplace except the allusions to matters of historical tradition, such as the death of Ongentheow, the death of Hygelac. With these exceptions, there is nothing in the latter part of Beowulf that might not have been taken at almost any time from the common stock of fables and appropriate sentiments, familiar to every maker or hearer of poetry from the days of the English con- quest of Britain, and long before that. It is not to be denied that the commonplaces here are handled with some discretion; though commonplace, they are not mean or dull.¹ 1 The story of Grendel and his mother is also common, but not as common as the dragon. The 1 It has been shown recently by Dr. Edward Sievers that Beowulf's dragon corresponds in many points to the dragon killed by Frotho, father of Haldanus, in Saxo, Book II. The dragon is not wholly commonplace, but has some particular distinctive traits. See Berichte der Königl. Sächs. Gesell- schaft der Wissenschaften, 6 Juli 1895. SECT. VI 195 BEOWULF function of this story is considerably different from the other, and the class to which it belongs is differ- ently distributed in literature. Both are stories of the killing of monsters, both belong naturally to legends of heroes like Theseus or Hercules. But for literature there is this difference between them, that dragons belong more appropriately to the more fantastic kinds of narrative, while stories of the deliverance of a house from a pestilent goblin are much more capable of sober treatment and verisimili- tude. Dragons are more easily distinguished and set aside as fabulous monsters than is the family of Grendel. Thus the story of Grendel is much better fitted than the dragon story for a composition like Beowulf, which includes a considerable amount of the detail of common experience and ordinary life. Dragons are easily scared from the neighbourhood of sober experience; they have to be looked for in the mountains and caverns of romance or fable. Whereas Grendel remains a possibility in the middle of common life, long after the last dragon has been disposed of. The people who tell fairy stories like the Well of the World's End, the Knight of the Red Shield, the Castle East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon, have no belief, have neither belief nor disbelief, in the adventures of them. But the same people have other stories of which they take a different view, stories of wonderful things more near to their own experience. Many a man to whom the Well of the World's End is an idea, a fancy, has in his mind a story like that of Grendel which he believes, which makes him afraid. } 196 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC The bogle that comes to a house at night and throttles the goodman is a creature more hardy than the dragon and more persevering. Stories like that of Beowulf and Grendel are to be found along with other popular stories in collections; but they are to be distinguished from them. There are popular heroes of tradition to this day who are called to do for lonely houses the service done by Beowulf for the house of Hrothgar. 2 Peer Gynt (not Ibsen's Peer Gynt, who is sophis- ticated, but the original Peter) is a lonely deer-stalker on the fells, who is asked by his neighbour to come and keep his house for him, which is infested with trolls. Peer Gynt clears them out,' and goes back to his deer-stalking. The story is plainly one that touches the facts of life more nearly than stories of Short- shanks or the Blue Belt. The trolls are a possibility. The story of Uistean Mor mac Ghille Phadrig is another of the same sort. It is not, like the Battle of the Birds or Conal Gulban, a thing of pure fantasy. It is a story that may pass for true when the others have lost everything but their pure imaginative value as stories. Here, again, in the West Highlands, the champion is called upon like Beowulf and Peer Gynt to save his neighbours from a warlock. And it is matter of history that Bishop Gudmund Arason of Holar in Iceland had to suppress a creature with a seal's head, Selkolla, that played the game of Grendel.³ "" 1 Asbjörnsen, Norske Huldre- Eventyr og Folkesagn. At renske Huset is the phrase" to cleanse the house. Cf. Heorot is gefælsod, "Heorot is cleansed," in Beowulf. 2 J. F. Campbell, Tales of the West Highlands, ii. p. 99. The reference to this story in Catriona (p. 174) will be remembered. 3 Biskupa Sögur, i. p. 604. SECT. VI 197 BEOWULF There are people, no doubt, for whom Peer Gynt and the trolls, Uistean Mor and the warlock, even Selkolla that Bishop Gudmund killed, are as impossible as the dragon in the end of the poem of Beowulf. But it is certain that stories like those of Grendel are commonly believed in many places where dragons are extinct. The story of Beowulf and Grendel is not wildly fantastic or improbable; it agrees with the conditions of real life, as they have been commonly understood at all times except those of peculiar enlightenment and rationalism. It is not to be com- pared with the Phaeacian stories of the adventures of Odysseus. Those stories in the Odyssey are plainly and intentionally in a different order of imagination from the story of the killing of the suitors. They are pure romance, and if any hearer of the Odyssey in ancient times was led to go in search of the island of Calypso, he might come back with the same confession as the seeker for the wonders of Broceliande, fol i alai. But there are other wonderful things in the Iliad and the Odyssey which are equally improbable to the modern rationalist and sceptic; yet by no means of the same kind of wonder as Calypso or the Sirens. Probably few of the earliest hearers of the Odyssey thought of the Sirens or of Calypso as anywhere near them, while many of them must have had their grandmothers' testimony for things like the portents before the death of the suitors. Grendel in the poem of Beowulf is in the same order of existence as these portents. If they are supersti- tions, they are among the most persistent; and they 198 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC are superstitions, rather than creatures of romance. The fight with Grendel is not of the same kind of adventure as Sigurd at the hedge of flame, or Svipdag at the enchanted castle. And the episode of Grendel's mother is further from matter of fact than the story of Grendel himself. The description of the desolate water is justly recognised as one of the masterpieces of the old English poetry; it deserves all that has been said of it as a passage of romance in the middle of epic. Beowulf's descent under the water, his fight with the warlock's mother, the darkness of that "sea dingle," the light of the mysterious sword, all this, if less admirably worked out than the first description of the dolorous mere, is quite as far from Heorot and the report of the table-talk of Hrothgar, Beowulf, and Hunferth. It is also a different sort of thing from the fight with Grendel. There is more of supernatural incident, more romantic ornament, less of that concentration in the struggle which makes the fight with Grendel almost as good in its way as its Icelandic counterpart, the wrestling of Grettir and Glam. The story of Beowulf, which in the fight with Grendel has analogies with the plainer kind of goblin story, rather alters its tone in the fight with Grendel's mother. There are parallels in Grettis Saga, and elsewhere, to encounters like this, with a hag or ogress under water; stories of this sort have been found no less credible than stories of haunting warlocks like Grendel. But this second story is not told in the same way as the first. It has more of the fashion SECT. VI 199 BEOWULF and temper of mythical fable or romance, and less of matter of fact. More particularly, the old sword, the sword of light, in the possession of Grendel's dam in her house under the water, makes one think of other legends of mysterious swords, like that of Helgi, and the "glaives of light" that are in the keeping of divers "gyre carlines" in the West Highland Tales. Further, the whole scheme is a common one in popular stories, especially in Celtic stories of giants; after the giant is killed his mother comes to avenge him. Nevertheless, the controlling power in the story of Beowulf is not that of any kind of romance or fantastic invention; neither the original fantasy of popular stories nor the literary embellishments of romantic schools of poetry. There are things in Beowulf that may be compared to things in the fairy tales; and, again, there are passages of high value for their use of the motive of pure awe and mystery. But the poem is made what it is by the power with which the characters are kept in right relation to their circumstances. The hero is not lost or carried away in his adventures. The introduction, the arrival in Heorot, and the conclusion, the return of Beowulf to his own country, are quite unlike the manner of pure romance; and these are the parts of the work by which it is most accurately to be judged. The adventure of Grendel is put in its right proportion when it is related by Beowulf to Hygelac. The repetition of the story, in a shorter form, and in the mouth of the hero himself, gives strength and 200 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC · body to a theme that was in danger of appearing trivial and fantastic. The popular story-teller has done his work when he has told the adventures of the giant-killer; the epic poet has failed, if he has done no more than this. The character and personage of Beowulf must be brought out and impressed on the audience; it is the poet's hero that they are bound to admire. He appeals to them, not directly, but with unmistakable force and emphasis, to say that they have beheld (" as may unworthiness define ") the nature of the hero, and to give him their praises. The beauty and the strength of the poem of Beowulf, as of all true epic, depend mainly upon its comprehensive power, its inclusion of various aspects, its faculty of changing the mood of the story. The fight with Grendel is an adventure of one sort, grim, unrelieved, touching close upon the springs of mortal terror, the recollection or the apprehension of real adversaries possibly to be met with in the darkness. The fight with Grendel's mother touches on other motives; the terror is further away from human habitations, and it is accompanied with a charm and a beauty, the beauty of the Gorgon, such as is absent from the first adventure. It would have loosened the tension and broken the unity of the scene, if any such irrelevances had been admitted into the story of the fight with Grendel. The fight with Grendel's mother is fought under other conditions; the stress is not the same; the hero goes out to conquer, he is beset by no such apprehension as in the case of the SECT. VI 201 BEOWULF night attack. The poet is at this point free to make use of a new set of motives, and here it is rather the scene than the action that is made vivid to the mind. But after this excursion the story comes back to its heroic beginning; and the conversation of Beowulf with his hosts in Denmark, and the report that he gives to his kin in Gautland, are enough to reduce to its right episodic dimensions the fantasy of the adventure under the sea. In the latter part of the poem there is still another distribution of interest. The conversation of the personages is still to be found occasionally carried on in the steady tones of people who have lives of their own, and belong to a world where the tunes are not all in one key. At the same time, it cannot be denied that the story of the Death of Beowulf is inclined to monotony. The epic variety and independence are obliterated by the too obviously pathetic intention. The character of this part of the poem is that of a late school of heroic poetry attempting, and with some success, to extract the spirit of an older kind of poetry, and to represent in one scene an heroic ideal or example, with emphasis and with concentration of all the available matter. But while the end of the poem may lose in some things by comparison with the stronger earlier parts, it is not so wholly lost in the charms of pathetic meditation as to forget the martial tone and the more resolute air altogether. There was a danger that Beowulf should be transformed into a sort of Amadis, a mirror of the earlier chivalry; with a loyal servitor attending upon his death, and uttering the rhetorical panegyric 202 CHAP. II TEUTONIC EPIC of an abstract ideal. But this danger is avoided, at least in part. Beowulf is still, in his death, a sharer in the fortunes of the Northern houses; he keeps his history. The fight with the dragon is shot through with reminiscences of the Gautish wars: Wiglaf speaks his sorrow for the champion of the Gauts; the virtues of Beowulf are not those of a fictitious paragon king, but of a man who would be missed in the day when the enemies of the Gauts should come upon them. The epic keeps its hold upon what went before, and on what is to come. Its construction is solid, not flat. It is exposed to the attractions of all kinds of subordinate and partial literature,-the fairy story, the conventional romance, the pathetic legend,-and it escapes them all by taking them all up as moments, as episodes and points of view, governed by the conception, or the comprehension, of some of the possibilities of human character in a certain form of society. It does not impose any one view on the reader; it gives what it is the proper task of the higher kind of fiction to give the play of life in different moods and under different aspects. CHAPTER III THE ICELANDIC SAGAS I ICELAND AND THE HEROIC AGE THE epic poetry of the Germans came to an end in different ways and at different seasons among the several nations of that stock. In England and the Continent it had to compete with the new romantic subjects and new forms of verse. In Germany the rhyming measures prevailed very early, but the themes of German tradition were not surrendered at the same time. The rhyming verse of Germany, foreign in its origin, continued to be applied for centuries in the rendering of German myths and heroic stories, some- times in a style with more or less pretence to courtli- ness, as in the Nibelungenlied and Kudrun; sometimes in open parade of the travelling minstrel's "public manners" and simple appetites. England had exactly the opposite fortune in regard to verse and subject- matter. In England the alliterative verse survived the changes of inflexion and pronunciation for more than five hundred years after Maldon, and uttered its last words in a poem written like the Song of Byrhtnoth on a contemporary battle,—the poem of Scottish Field.¹ 1 Ed. Robson, Chetham Society, 1855, from the Lyme MS.; ed. Furnivall and Hales, Percy Folio Manuscript, 1867. : 206 CHAP. III THE ICELANDIC SAGAS There was girding forth of guns, with many great stones; Archers uttered out their arrows and eagerly they shotten; They proched us with spears and put many over; That the blood outbrast at their broken harness. There was swinging out of swords, and swapping of heads, We blanked them with bills through all their bright armour, That all the dale dinned of the derf strokes. But while this poem of Flodden corresponds in its subject to the poem of Maldon, there is no such likeness between any other late alliterative poem and the older poems of the older language. The allitera- tive verse is applied in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to every kind of subject except those of Germanic tradition. England, however, has the advantage over Germany, that while Germany lost the old verse, England did not lose the English heroic subjects, though, as it happens, the story of King Horn and the story of Havelock the Dane are not told in the verse that was used for King Arthur and Gawain, for the tale of Troy and the wars of Alexander. The recent discovery of a fragment of the Song of Wade is an admonition to be cautious in making the extant works of Middle English literature into a standard for all that has ceased to exist. But no new discovery, even of a Middle English alliterative poem of Beowulf or of Walter of Aquitaine, would alter the fact that the alliterative measure of English poetry in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, like the ancient themes of the German rhyming poems, is a survival in an age when the chief honours go to other kinds of poetry. The author of Piers Plowman is a notable writer, and so SECT. I 207 ICELAND AND THE HEROIC AGE are the poets of Gawain, and of the Mort Arthure, and of the Destruction of Troy; but Chaucer and not Langland is the poetical master of that age. The poems of the Nibelungen and of Kudrun are rightly honoured, but it was to the author of Parzival, and to the courtly lyrics of Walther von der Vogelweide, that the higher rank was given in the age of the Hohenstaufen, and the common fame is justified by history, so often as history chooses to have any concern with such things. own, In the lands of the old Northern speech the old heroic poetry was displaced by the new Court poetry of the Scalds. The heroic subjects were not, however, allowed to pass out of memory. The new poetry could not do without them, and required, and obtained, its heroic dictionary in the Edda. The old subjects hold their own, or something of their with every change of fashion. They were made into prose stories, when prose was in favour; they were the subjects of Rímur, rhyming Icelandic romances, when that form came later into vogue.¹ In Denmark they were para- phrased, many of them, by Saxo in his History; many of them became the subjects of ballads, in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the Faroes. In this way some of the inheritance of the old German world was saved in different countries and languages, for the most part in ballads and chap-books, apart from the main roads of literature. But these heirlooms were not the whole stock of the heroic age. After the failure and decline of the old poetry there 1 See below, p. 324. 208 CHAP. III THE ICELANDIC SAGAS remained an unexhausted piece of ground; and the great imaginative triumph of the Teutonic heroic age was won in Iceland with the creation of a new epic tradition, a new form applied to new subjects. Iceland did something more than merely preserve the forms of an antiquated life whose day was over. It was something more than an island of refuge for muddled and blundering souls that had found the career of the great world too much for them. The ideas of an old-fashioned society migrated to Iceland, but they did not remain there unmodified. The paradox of the history of Iceland is that the unsuc- cessful old ideas were there maintained by a commu- nity of people who were intensely self-conscious and exceptionally clear in mind. Their political ideas were too primitive for the common life of medieval Christen- dom. The material life of Iceland in the Middle Ages was barbarous when compared with the life of London or Paris, not to speak of Provence or Italy, in the same centuries. At the same time, the modes of thought in Iceland, as is proved by its historical literature, were distinguished by their freedom from extravagances,— from the extravagance of medieval enthusiasm as well as from the superstitions of barbarism. The life of an heroic age—that is, of an older stage of civilisation than the common European medieval form-was interpreted and represented by the men of that age themselves with a clearness of understanding that appears to be quite unaffected by the common medieval fallacies and "idolisms." This clear self-consciousness is the distinction of Icelandic civilisation and literature. SECT. I 209 ICELAND AND THE HEROIC AGE It is not vanity or conceit. It does not make the Icelandic writers anxious about their own fame or merits. It is simply clear intelligence, applied under a dry light to subjects that in themselves are primitive, such as never before or since have been represented in the same way. The life is their own life; the record is that of a dispassionate observer. While the life represented in the Sagas is more primitive, less civilised, than the life of the great Southern nations in the Middle Ages, the record of that life is by a still greater interval in advance of all the common modes of narrative then known to the more fortunate or more luxurious parts of Europe. The conventional form of the Saga has none of the common medieval restrictions of view. It is accepted at once by modern readers without deduction or apology on the score of antique fashion, because it is in essentials the form with which modern readers are acquainted in modern story-telling; and more especially because the language is unaffected and idiomatic, not "quaint" in any way, and because the conversations are like the talk of living people. The Sagas are stories of characters who speak for themselves, and who are interesting on their own merits. There are good and bad Sagas, and the good ones are not all equally good throughout. The mistakes and misuses of the inferior parts of the literature do not, however, detract from the sufficiency of the common form, as represented at its best. The invention of the common form of the Saga is an achievement which deserves to be judged by the best Р 210 CHAP. III THE ICELANDIC SAGAS in its kind. That kind was not exempt, any more than the Elizabethan drama or the modern novel, from the impertinences and superfluities of trivial authors. Further, there were certain conditions and circumstances about its origin that sometimes hindered in one way, while they gave help in another. The Saga is a compromise between opposite tempta- tions, and the compromise is not always equitable. II MATTER AND FORM It is no small part of the force of the Sagas, and at the same time a difficulty and an embarrassment, that they have so much of reality behind them. The element of history in them, and their close relation to the lives of those for whom they were made, have given them a substance and solidity beyond anything else in the imaginative stories of the Middle Ages. It may be that this advantage is gained rather unfairly. The art of the Sagas, which is so modern in many things, and so different from the medieval conventions in its selection of matter and its development of the plot, is largely indebted to circumstances outside of art. In its rudiments it was always held close to the real and material interests of the people; it was not like some other arts which in their beginning are fanciful, or dependent on myth or legend for their subject-matter, as in the medieval schools of painting or sculpture generally, or in the medieval drama. Its imaginative methods were formed through essays in the representation of actual life; its first artists were impelled by historical motives, and by personal and 212 CHAP. III THE ICELANDIC SAGAS local interests. The art of the Sagas was from the first "immersed in matter"; it had from the first all the advantage that it is given by interests stronger and more substantial than those of mere literature; and, conversely, all the hindrance that such irrelevant interests provide, when "mere literature" attempts to disengage itself and govern its own course. The local history, the pedigrees of notable families, are felt as a hindrance, in a greater or less degree, by all readers of the Sagas; as a preliminary obstacle to clear comprehension. The Sagas differ in value, He said that she had done right in telling him what he asked. Gudrun became an old woman, and it is said that she lost her sight. She died at Helgafell, and there she rests. This is one of the passages which it is easy to quote, and also dangerous. The confession of Gudrun loses incalculably when detached from the whole story, as also her earlier answer fails, by itself, to represent the meaning and the art of the S 258 CHAP. III THE ICELANDIC SAGAS Saga. They are the two keys that the author has given; neither is of any use by itself, and both together are of service only in relation to the whole story and all its fabric of incident and situation and changing views of life. V COMEDY THE Poetical Justice of Tragedy is observed, and rightly observed, in many of the Sagas and in the greater plots. Fate and Retribution preside over the stories of Njal and his sons, and the Lovers of Gudrun. The story of Gisli works itself out in accordance with the original forebodings, yet without any illicit process in the logic of acts and motives, or any intervention of the mysterious powers who accompany the life of Gisli in his dreams. Even in less self-consistent stories the same ideas have a part; the story of Gudmund the Mighty, which is a series of separate chapters, is brought to an end in the Nemesis for Gudmund's injustice to Thorkell Hake. But the Sagas claim exemption from the laws of Tragedy, when poetical Justice threatens to become tyrannical. Partly by the nature of their origin, no doubt, and their initial dependence on historical recollections of actual events, they are driven to include a number of things that might disappoint a well-educated gallery of spectators; the drama is 1 1 Vide supra, p. 221 (the want of tragedy in Viga Glúms Saga). 260 THE ICELANDIC SAGAS CHAP. III L not always worked out, or it may be that the meaning of a chapter or episode lies precisely in the disappointment of conventional expectations. L There is only one comedy, or at most two, among the Sagas-the story of the Confederates (Banda- manna Saga) with an afterpiece, the short story of Alecap (Olkofra páttr). The composition of the Sagas, however, admits all sorts of comic passages and undignified characters, and it also quietly unravels many complications that seem to be working up for a tragic ending. The dissipation of the storm before it breaks is, indeed, so common an event that it almost becomes itself a convention of narrative in the Sagas, by opposition to the common devices of the feud and vengeance. There is a good instance of this paradoxical conclusion in Arons Saga (c. 12), an authentic biography, apparently narrating an actual event. The third chapter of Glúma gives another instance of threatened trouble passing away. Ivar, a Norwegian with a strong hatred of Icelanders, seems likely to quarrel with Eyolf, Glum's father, but being a gentleman is won over by Eyolf's bearing. This is a part of the Saga where one need not expect to meet with any authentic historical tradition. The story of Eyolf in Norway is probably mere literature, and shows the working of the common principles of the Saga, as applied by an author of fiction. The sojourn of Grettir with the ! in face and mouth, the rich Duke, on whom God have mercy When this was said, they go to bury the Duke in the chapel beyond Belin; the pilgrims see it to this day, as they come back from Galicia, from St. James.¹ 66 1 One of the frequent morals of French epic (repeated also by French romance) is the vanity of overmuch sorrow for the dead. ἀλλὰ χρὴ τὸν μὲν καταθάπτειν ὅς κε θάνῃσιν νηλέα θυμὸν ἔχοντες, ἐπ᾽ ἤματι δακρύσαντας. (Odysseus speaking) I. xix. 228. "Laissiez ester," li quens Guillaumes dit; "Tout avenra ce que doit avenir; 1 IV 353 THE HEROIC AGE Roland, Raoul de Cambrai, and Garin le Loherain represent three kinds of French heroic poetry. Roland is the more purely heroic kind, in which the interest is concentrated on the passion of the hero, and the hero is glorified by every possible means of patriotism, religion, and the traditional ethics of battle, with the scenery and the accom- paniments all chosen so as to bring him into relief and give him an ideal or symbolical value, like that of the statues of the gods. Raoul and Garin, con- trasted with Roland, are two varieties of another species; namely, of the heroic poetry which (like the Odyssey and the Icelandic stories) represents the common life of an heroic age, without employing the ideal motives of great causes, religious or patriotic, and without giving to the personages any great representative or symbolical import. The subjects of Raoul and Garin belong to the same order. The difference between them is that the author of the first is only half awake to the chances offered by his theme. The theme is well chosen, not disabled, like so many romantic plots, by an inherent fallacy of ethics or imagination; a story that shapes itself naturally, if the author has the wit to see it. The author of Raoul de Cambrai, unhappily, has "no more wit than a Christian or an ordinary man," and leaves his work encumbered with his dulness of perception; an Li mort as mors, li vif voissent as vis; Duel sor dolor et joie sor joïr Ja nus frans hons nel devroit maintenir." Les cors enportent, les ont en terre mis. Garin, i. p. 262. 2 A 354 CHAP. THE OLD FRENCH EPIC evidence of the fertility of the heroic age in good subjects, and of the incompetence of some of the artists. Garin, on the other hand, shows how the common subject-matter might be worked up by a man of intelligence, rather discursive than imaginative, but alive to the meaning of his story, and before every- thing a continuous narrator, with the gift of natural sequence in his adventures. He relates as if he were following the course of events in his own memory, with simplicity and lucidity, qualities which were not beyond the compass of the old French verse and diction. He does not stop to elaborate his characters ; he takes them perhaps too easily. But his lightness of spirit saves him from the untruth of Raoul de Cambrai; and while his ethics are the commonplaces of the heroic age, these commonplaces are not mere formulas or cant; they are vividly realised. There is no need to multiply examples in order to prove the capacity of French epic for the same kind of subjects as those of the Sagas; that is, for the repre- sentation of strenuous and unruly life in a compre- hensive and liberal narrative, noble in spirit and not much hampered by conventional nobility or dignity. Roland is the great achievement of French epic, and there are other poems, also, not far removed from the severity of Roland and inspired by the same patriotic and religious ardour. But the poem of Garin of Lorraine (which begins with the defence of France against the infidels, but very soon passes to the business of the great feud—its proper theme), though it is lacking in the political motives, not to IV 355 COMEDY speak of the symbolical imagination of Roland, is significant in another way, because though much later in date, though written at a time when Romance was prevalent, it is both archaic in its subject and also comprehensive in its treatment. It has something like the freedom of movement and the ease which in the Icelandic Sagas go along with similar antique subjects. The French epic poetry is not all of it made sublime by the ideas of Roland; there is still scope for the free representation of life in different moods, with character as the dominant interest. It should not be forgotten that the French epic has room for comedy, not merely in the shape of "comic relief," though that unhappily is sometimes favoured by the chansons de geste, and by the romances as well, but in the "humours" inseparable from all large and unpedantic fiction. A good deal of credit on this account may be claimed for Galopin, the reckless humorist of the party of Garin of Lorraine, and something rather less for Rigaut the Villain Unwashed, another of Garin's friends. This latter appears to be one of the same family as Hreidar the Simple, in the Saga of Harald Hardrada; a figure of popular comedy, one of the lubbers who turn out something different from their promise. Clumsy strength and good-nature make one of the most elementary compounds, and may easily be misused (as in Rainouart) where the author has few scruples and no dramatic consistency. Galopin is a more singular humorist, a ribald and a prodigal, yet of gentle birth, and capable of 356 CHAP. THE OLD FRENCH EPIC good service when he can be got away from the tavern. There are several passages in the chansons de geste where, as with Rainouart, the fun is of a grotesque and gigantic kind, like the fun to be got out of the giants in the Northern mythology, and the trolls in the Northern popular tales. The heathen champion Corsolt in the Coronemenz Looïs makes good comedy of this sort, when he accosts the Pope: "Little man! why is your head shaved?" and explains to him his objection to the Pope's religion: "You are not well advised to talk to me of God: he has done me more wrong than any other man in the world," and so on.¹ Also, in a less exaggerated way, there is some appreciation of the humour to be found in the contrast between the churl and the knight, and their different points of view; as in the passage of the Charroi de Nismes, where William of Orange ¹ Respont li reis: "N'iés pas bien enseigniez, Qui devant mei oses de Deu plaidier; C'est l'om el mont qui plus m'a fait irier : Mon pere ocist une foldre del ciel ; Tot i fu ars, ne li pot l'en aidier. Quant Deus l'ot mort, si fist que enseigniez ; El ciel monta, ça ne volt repairier; Ge nel poeie sivre ne enchalcier, Mais de ses omes me sui ge puis vengiez; De cels qui furent levé et baptisié Ai fait destruire plus de trente miliers, Ardeir en feu et en eve neier; Quant ge la sus ne puis Deu guerreier, Nul de ses omes ne vueil ça jus laissier, Et mei et Deu n'avons mais que plaidier : Meie est la terre et siens sera li ciels. 7.c., 1. 522. The last verse expresses the same sentiment as the answer of the Emperor Henry when he was told to beware of God's vengeance : "Celum celi Domino, terram autem dedit filiis hominum" (Otton. Frising. Gesta Frid. i. 11). IV 357 COMEDY questions the countryman about the condition of the city under its Saracen masters, and is answered with information about the city tolls and the price of bread.¹ It must be admitted, however, that this slight passage of comedy is far outdone by the conversation in the romance of Aucassin and Nicolette, between Aucassin and the countryman, where the author of that story seems to get altogether beyond the conventions of his own time into the region of Chaucer, or even some- where near the forest of Arden. The comedy of the chansons de geste is easily satisfied with plain and robust practical jokes. Yet it counts for something in the picture, and it might be possible, in a detailed criticism of the epics, to distinguish between the comic incidents that have an artistic value and intention, and those that are due merely to the rudeness of those common minstrels who are accused (by their rivals in epic poetry) of corrupting and debasing the texts. There were many ways in which the French epic was degraded at the close of its course-by dilution and expansion, by the growth of a kind of dull 1 Li cuens Guillaumes li comença à dire : -Diva, vilain, par la loi dont tu vives Fus-tu a Nymes, la fort cité garnie ? —Oïl, voir, sire, le paaige me quistrent ; Ge fui trop poures, si nel poi baillier mie. Il me lessèrent por mes enfanz qu'il virent. -Di moi, vilain, des estres de la vile. Et cil respont: Ce vos sai-ge bien dire Por un denier .ii. granz pains i véismes; La denerée vaut .iii. en autre vile: Moult par est bone, se puis n'est empirie. -Fox, dist Guillaume, ce ne demant-je mie, Mès des paiens chevaliers de la vile, Del rei Otrant et de sa compaignie. l.c., 11. 903-916. 358 CHAP. THE OLD FRENCH EPIC parasitic, sapless language over the old stocks, by the general failure of interest, and the transference of favour to other kinds of literature. Reading came into fashion, and the minstrels lost their welcome in the castles, and had to betake themselves to more vulgar society for their livelihood. At the same time, epic made a stand against the new modes and a partial compliance with them; and the chansons de geste were not wholly left to the vagrant reciters, but were sometimes copied out fair in handsome books, and held their own with the romances. The compromise between epic and romance in old French literature is most interesting where romance has invaded a story of the simpler kind like Raoul de Cambrai. Stories of war against the infidel, stories like those of William of Orange, were easily made romantic. The poem of the Prise d'Orange, for example, an addition to this cycle, is a pure romance of adventure, and a good one, though it has nothing of the more solid epic in it. Where the action is carried on between the knights of France and the Moors, one is prepared for a certain amount of wonder; the palaces and dungeons of the Moors are the right places for strange things to happen, and the epic of the defence of France goes easily off into night excursions and disguises: the Moorish princess also is there, to be won by the hero. All this is natural; but it is rather more paradoxical to find the epic of family feuds, originally sober, grave, and business-like, turning more and more extravagant, as it does in the Four Sons of Aymon, which in its IV 359 HUON DE BORDEAUX original form, no doubt, was something like the more serious parts of Raoul de Cambrai or of the Lorrains, but which in the extant version is expanded and made wonderful, a story of wild adventures, yet with traces still of its origin among the realities of the heroic age, the common matters of practical interest to heroes. The case of Huon of Bordeaux is more curious, for there the original sober story has been preserved, and it is one of the best and most coherent of them all,¹ till it is suddenly changed by the sound of Oberon's horn and passes out of the real world altogether. The lines of the earlier part of the story are worth following, for there is no better story among the French poems that represent the ruder heroic age— a simple story of feudal rivalries and jealousies, sur- viving in this strange way as an introduction to the romance of Oberon. The Emperor Charlemagne, one hundred and twenty-five years old, but not particularly reverend, holds a court at Paris one Whitsuntide and asks to be relieved of his kingdom. His son Charlot is to succeed him. Charlot is worthless, the companion of traitors and disorderly persons; he has made enough trouble already in embroiling Ogier the Dane with the Emperor. Charlemagne is infatuated and will have his son made king: Si m'aït Diex, tu auras si franc fief Com Damediex qui tot puet justicier Tient Paradis de regne droiturier! ¹ Cf. Auguste Longnon, "L'élément historique de Huon de Bordeaux, Romania, viii. 360 CHAP. THE OLD FRENCH EPIC Then the traitor Amaury de la Tor de Rivier gets up and brings forward the case of Bordeaux, which has rendered no service for seven years, since the two brothers, Huon and Gerard, were left orphans. Amaury proposes that the orphans should be dispossessed. Charlemagne agrees at once, and withdraws his assent again (a painful spectacle !) when it is suggested to him that Huon and his brother have omitted their duties in pure innocence, and that their father Sewin was always loyal. Messengers are sent to bring Huon and Gerard to Paris, and every chance is to be given them of proving their good faith to the Emperor. This is not what Amaury the traitor wants; he goes to Charlot and proposes an ambuscade to lie in wait for the two boys and get rid of them; his real purpose being to get rid of the king's son as well as of Huon of Bordeaux. The two boys set out, and on the way fall in with the Abbot of Clugni, their father's cousin, a strong-minded prelate, who accompanies them. Out- side Paris they come to the ambush, and the king's son is despatched by Amaury to encounter them. What follows is an admirable piece of narrative. Gerard rides up to address Charlot; Charlot rides at him as he is turning back to report to Huon and the Abbot, and Gerard who is unarmed falls severely wounded. Then Huon, also unarmed, rides at Charlot, though his brother calls out to him: "I see helmets flashing there among the bushes." With his scarlet mantle rolled round his arm he meets the lance of IV 361 HUON DE BORDEAUX Charlot safely, and with his sword, as he passes, cuts through the helmet and head of his adversary. This is good enough for Amaury, and he lets Huon and his party ride on to the city, while he takes up the body of Charlot on a shield and follows after. Huon comes before the Emperor and tells his story as far as he knows it; he does not know that the felon he has killed is the Emperor's son. Charlemagne gives solemn absolution to Huon. Then appears Amaury with a false story, making Huon the aggressor. Charlemagne forgets all about the absolu- tion and snatches up a knife, and is with difficulty calmed by his wise men. The ordeal of battle has to decide between the two parties; there are elaborate preparations and preliminaries, obviously of the most vivid interest to the audience. The demeanour of the Abbot of Clugni ought not to be passed over: he vows that if Heaven permits any mischance to come upon Huon, he, the Abbot, will make it good on St. Peter himself, and batter his holy shrine till the gold flies. In the combat Huon is victorious; but unhappily a last treacherous effort of his enemy, after he has yielded and confessed, makes Huon cut off his head in too great a hurry before the confession is heard by the Emperor or any witnesses :— Le teste fist voler ens el larris: Hues le voit, mais ce fu sans jehir. The head went flying over the lea, but it had no more words to speak. 362 CHAP. THE OLD FRENCH EPIC Huon is not forgiven by the Emperor; the Emperor spares his life, indeed, but sends him on a hopeless expedition. And there the first part of the story ends. The present version is dated in the early part of the reign of St. Louis; it is contemporary with Snorri Sturluson and Sturla his nephew, and exhibits, though not quite in the Icelandic manner, the principal motives of early unruly society, without much fanciful addition, and with a very strong hold upon the tragic situation, and upon the types of character. As in Raoul de Cambrai, right and wrong are mixed; the Emperor has a real grievance against Huon, and Huon, with little fault of his own, is put apparently in the wrong. The interests involved are of the strongest possible. There was not a single lord among those to whom the minstrel repeated his story who did not know that he might have to look out for encroachments and injustice— interference at any rate-from the king, and treachery from his neighbours. No one hoped to leave his castles and lands in peace to his son, who did not also fear that his son might be left defenceless and his lands exposed to competition; a fear most touchingly expressed in the lament of William of Poitiers, when he set out on the first Crusade.¹ Whatever general influences of law or politics or social economy are supposed to be at work in the story of Huon of Bordeaux,—and all this earlier part of it is a story of feudal politics and legal problems,— 1 "Pos de chantar m'es pres talens:"-Raynouard, Choix des poésies des Troubadours, iv. p. 83; Bartsch, Chrestomathie provençale. IV 363 HUON DE BORDEAUX these influences were also present in the real world in which the maker and the hearers of the poem had their life. It is plain and serious dealing with matter of fact. But after the ordeal of battle in which Huon kills the traitor, the tone changes with great abruptness and a new story begins. The commission laid upon Huon by the implacable and doting Emperor is nothing less than that which afterwards was made a byword for all impossible enterprises—“to take the Great Turk by the beard.” He is to go to Babylon and, literally, to beard the Admiral there, and carry off the Admiral's daughter. The audience is led away into the wide world of Romance. Huon goes to the East by way of Rome and Brindisi-naturally enough—but the real world ends at Brindisi; beyond that everything is magical. CHAPTER V ROMANCE AND THE OLD FRENCH ROMANTIC SCHOOLS ROMANCE AND THE OLD FRENCH ROMANTIC SCHOOLS ROMANCE in many varieties is to be found inherent in Epic and in Tragedy; for some readers, possibly, the great and magnificent forms of poetry are most attractive when from time to time they forget their severity, and when the tragic strength is allowed to rest, as in the fairy interludes of the Odyssey, or the similes of the clouds, winds, and mountain-waters in the Iliad. If Romance be the name for the sort of imagination that possesses the mystery and the spell of everything remote and unattainable, then Romance is to be found in the old Northern heroic poetry in larger measure than any epic or tragic solemnity, and in no small measure also even in the steady course of the Icelandic histories. Possibly Romance is in its best place here, as an element in the epic harmony; perhaps the romantic mystery is most mysterious when it is found as something additional among the graver and more positive affairs of epic or tragic personages. The occasional visitations of the dreaming moods of romance, in the middle of a great epic or a great tragedy, are often more romantic than the literature which is nothing but romance from beginning to end. 368 CHAP. ROMANCE The strongest poets, Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare, have along with their strong reasoning enough of the lighter and fainter grace and charm to be the despair of all the "romantic schools" in the world. In the Icelandic prose stories, as has been seen already, there is a similar combination. These stories contain the strongest imaginative work of the Middle Ages before Dante. Along with this there is found in them occasionally the uncertain and incalculable play of the other, the more airy mode of imagination; and the romance of the strong Sagas is more romantic than that of the medieval works which have no other interest to rely upon, or of all but a very few. One of the largest and plainest facts of medieval history is the change of literature in the twelfth century, and the sudden and exuberant growth and progress of a number of new poetical forms; particu- larly the courtly lyric that took shape in Provence, and passed into the tongues of Italy, France, and Germany, and the French romance which obeyed the same general inspiration as the Provençal poetry, and was equally powerful as an influence on foreign nations. The French Romantic Schools of the twelfth century are among the most definite and the most important appearances even in that most wonderful age; though it is irrational to contrast them with the other great historical movements of the time, because there is no real separation between them. French romance is part of the life of the time, and the life of the twelfth century is reproduced in French romance. The rise of these new forms of story makes an V 369 THE OLD FRENCH ROMANTIC SCHOOLS unmistakable difference between the age that preceded them and everything that comes after. They are a new, fresh, and prosperous beginning in literature, and they imply the failure of the older manner of thought, the older fashion of imagination, represented in the epic literature of France, not to speak of the various Teutonic forms of heroic verse and prose that are related to the epic of France only by a remote common ancestry, and a certain general likeness in the conditions of “heroic" life. The defeat of French epic, as has been noted already, was slow and long resisted; but the victory of romance was inevitable. Together with the influence of the Provençal lyric idealism, it determined the forms of modern literature, long after the close of the Middle Ages. The change of fashion in the twelfth century is as momentous and far-reaching in its consequences as that to which the name "Renaissance" is generally appropriated. The later Renaissance, indeed, in what concerns imaginative literature, makes no such abrupt. and sudden change of fashion as was made in the twelfth century. The poetry and romance of the Renaissance follow naturally upon the literature of the Middle Ages; for the very good reason that it was the Middle Ages which began, even in their dark beginnings, the modern study of the humanities, and in the twelfth century made a remarkable and determined effort to secure the inheritance of ancient poetry for the advantage of the new tongues and their new forms of verse. There is no such line of division between Ariosto and Chrestien of Troyes as there is between Chrestien and the primitive epic. 2 B 370 CHAP. ROMANCE The romantic schools of the twelfth century are the result and evidence of a great unanimous move- ment, the origins of which may be traced far back in the general conditions of education and learning, in the influence of Latin authors, in the interchange of popular tales. They are among the most character- istic productions of the most impressive, varied, and characteristic period in the Middle Ages; of that century which broke, decisively, with the old "heroic" traditions, and made the division between the heroic and the chivalric age. When the term "medieval " is used in modern talk, it almost always denotes something which first took definite shape in the twelfth century. The twelfth century is the source of most of the "medieval" influences in modern art and litera- ture, and the French romances of that age are the original authorities for most of the "Gothic" orna- ments adopted in modern romantic schools. The twelfth-century French romances form a definite large group, with many ranks and divisions, some of which are easily distinguished, while all are of great historical interest. One common quality, hardly to be mistaken, is that which marks them all as belonging to a romantic school, in almost all the modern senses of that term. That is to say, they are not the spontaneous product of an uncritical and ingenuous imagination; they are not the same sort of thing as the popular stories on which many of them are founded; they are the literary work of authors more or less sophisticated, on the look-out for new sensations and new literary V 371 THE OLD FRENCH ROMANTIC SCHOOLS devices. It is useless to go to those French books in order to catch the first fresh jet of romantic fancy, the "silly sooth" of the golden age. One might as well go to the Légende des Siècles. Most of the romance of the medieval schools is already hot and dusty and fatigued. It has come through the mills of a thousand active literary men, who know their business, and have an eye to their profits. Medieval romance, in its most characteristic and most influential form, is almost as factitious and professional as modern Gothic architecture. The twelfth-century dealers in romantic commonplaces are as fully conscious of the market value of their goods as any later poet who has borrowed from them their giants and enchanters, their forests and their magic castles; and these and similar properties are used in the twelfth century with the same kind of literary sharpness, the same attention to the demands of the "reading public," as is shown by the various poets and novelists who have waited on the successes, and tried to copy the methods, of Goethe, Scott, or Victor Hugo. Pure Romance, such as is found in the old Northern poems, is very rare in the French stories of the twelfth century; the magical touch and the sense of mystery, and all the things that are associated with the name romance, when that name is applied to the Ancient Mariner, or La Belle Dame sans Merci, or the Lady of Shalott, are generally absent from the most successful romances of the great medieval romantic age, full though they may be of all the forms of chivalrous devotion and all the most wonderful romantic machines. Most 372 CHAP. ROMANCE of them are as different from the true irresistible magic of fancy as Thalaba from Kubla Khan. The name “romantic school" is rightly applicable to them and their work, for almost the last thing that is produced in a "romantic school" is the infallible and indescribable touch of romance. A "romantic school" is a company for the profitable working of Broceliande, an organised attempt to "open up open up" the Enchanted Ground; such, at least, is the appearance of a great deal of the romantic literature of the early part of the present century, and of its forerunner in the twelfth. There is this difference between the two ages, that the medieval romanticists are freer and more original than the moderns who made a business out of tales of terror and wonder, and tried to fatten their lean kine on the pastures of "Gothic" or of Oriental learning. The romance-writers of the twelfth century, though they did much to make romance into a mechanic art, though they reduced the game to a system and left the different romantic combinations and conventions within the reach of almost any 'prentice hand, were yet in their way original explorers. Though few of them got out of their materials the kind of effect that appeals to us now most strongly, and though we think we can see what they missed in their opportuni- ties, yet they were not the followers of any great man of their own time, and they chose their own way freely, not as bungling imitators of a greater artist. It is a disappointment to find that romance is rarely at its finest in the works that technically have the best V 373 THE OLD FRENCH ROMANTIC SCHOOLS right in the world to be called by that name. Nevertheless, the work that is actually found there is interesting in its own way, and historically of an importance which does not need to be emphasised. The true romantic interest is very unequally distri- buted over the works of the Middle Ages, and there is least of it in the authors who are most representative of the "age of chivalry." There is a disappointment prepared for any one who looks in the greater romantic authors of the twelfth century for the music of the Faery Queene or La Belle Dame sans Merci. There is more of the pure romantic element in the poems of Brynhild, in the story of Njal, in the Song of Roland, than in the famous romances of Chrestien of Troyes or any of his imitators, though they have all the wonders of the Isle of Britain at their command, though they have the very story of Tristram and the very mystery of the Grail to quicken them and call them out. Elegance, fluency, sentiment, romantic adventures are common, but for words like those of Hervor at the grave of her father, or of the parting between Brynhild and Sigurd, or of Helgi and Sigrun, it would be vain to search in the romances of Benoit de Sainte More or of Chrestien. Yet these are the masters of the art of romance when it was fresh and strong, a victorious fashion If the search be continued further, the search for that kind of imaginative beauty which these authors do not give, it will not be unsuccessful. The greater authors of the twelfth century have more affinity to the "heroic romance" of the school of the Grand 374 CHAP. ROMANCE Cyrus than to the dreams of Spenser or Coleridge. But, while this is the case with the most distinguished members of the romantic school, it is not so with all the rest. The magic that is wanting to the clear and elegant narrative of Benoit and Chrestien will be found elsewhere; it will be found in one form in the mystical prose of the Queste del St. Graal- a very different thing from Chrestien's Perceval- it will be found, again and again, in the prose of Sir Thomas Malory; it will be found in many ballads and ballad burdens, in William and Margaret, in Binnorie, in the Wife of Usher's Well, in the Rime of the Count Arnaldos, in the Königskinder; it will be found in the most beautiful story of the Middle Ages, Aucassin and Nicolette; one of the few perfectly beautiful stories in the world, about which there is no need, in England at any rate, to say anything in addition to the well-known passages in which it has been praised. Aucassin and Nicolette cannot be made into a representative medieval romance; there is nothing else like it; and the qualities that make it what it is are the opposite of the rhetorical self- possession, the correct and deliberate narrative of Chrestien and his school. It contains the quint- essence of romantic imagination, but it is quite unlike the most fashionable and successful romances. There are several stages in the history of the great Romantic School, as well as several distinct sources of interest. The value of the best works of the school consists in their representation of the passion of love. V 375 THE OLD FRENCH ROMANTIC SCHOOLS They turn the psychology of the courtly amatory poets into narrative. Chaucer's address to the old poets,-"Ye lovers that can make of sentiment," when he complains that they have left little for him to glean in the field of poetry, does not touch the lyrical poets only. The narrative poetry of the courteous school is equally devoted to the philosophy of love. Narrative poets like Chrestien, when they turn to lyric, can change their instrument without changing the purport of their verse; lyric or narra- tive, it has the same object, the same duty. So also, two hundred years later, Chaucer himself or Froissart may use narrative or lyric forms indifferently, and observe the same "courteous" ideal in both. In the twelfth-century narratives, besides the interest of the love-story and all its science, there was the interest of adventure, of strange things; and here there is a great diversity among the authors, and a perceptible difference between earlier and later usage. Courteous sentiment, running through a succession of wonderful adventures, is generally enough to make a romance; but there are some notable varieties, both in the sentiment and in the incidents. The sentiment comes later in the history of literature than the adventures; the conventional romantic form of plot may be said to have been fixed before the romantic sentiment was brought to its furthest refinement. The wonders of romantic story are more easily traced to their origin, or at least to some of their earlier forms, than the spirit of chival- rous idealism which came in due time to take possession 376 CHAP. ROMANCE of the fabulous stories, and gave new meanings to the lives of Tristram and Lancelot. Variety of incident, remoteness of scene, and all the incredible things in the world, had been at the disposal of medieval authors long before the French Romantic Schools began to define themselves. The wonders of the East, especially, had very early come into literature; and the Anglo-Saxon Epistle of Alexander seems to anticipate the popular taste for Eastern stories, just as the Anglo-Saxon version of Apollonius of Tyre anticipates the later importation of Greek romance, and the appropriation of classical rhetoric, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; as the grace and brightness of the old English poems of St. Andrew or St. Helen seem to anticipate the peculiar charm of some of the French poems of adventures. In French literature before the vogue of romance can be said to have begun, and before the epic form had lost its supremacy, the poem of the Pilgrimage of Charlemagne, one of the oldest extant poems of the heroic cycle, is already far gone in subjection to the charm of mere unqualified wonder and exaggeration-rioting in the wonders of the East, like the Varangians on their holiday, when they were allowed a free day to loot in the Emperor's palace.¹ 1 See the account of the custom in the Saga of Harald Hardrada, c. 16. “Harald entrusted to Jarizleif all the gold that he had sent from Micklegarth, and all sorts of precious things: so much wealth all together, as no man of the North Lands had ever seen before in one man's hands. Harald had thrice come in for the palace-sweeping (Polotasvarf) while he was in Micklegarth. It is the law there that when the Greek king dies, the Varangians shall have a sweep of the palace; they go over all the king's palaces where his treasures are, and every man shall have for his own what falls to his hand" (Fornmanna Sögur, vi. p. 171). • V 377 ORNAMENTAL WORK The poem of Charlemagne's journey to Constantinople is unrefined enough, but the later and more elegant romances deal often in the same kind of matter. Mere furniture counts for a good deal in the best romances, and they are full of descriptions of riches and splendours. The story of Troy is full of details of various sorts of magnificence: the city of Troy itself and "Ylion," its master-tower, were built by Priam out of all kinds of marble, and covered with sculpture all over. Much further on in Benoit's poem (1. 14,553) Hector is brought home wounded to a room which is described in 300 lines, with particulars of its remarkable decorations, especially its four magical images. The tomb of Penthesilea (1. 25,690) is too much for the author :- Sepolture ot et monument Tant que se Plenius fust vis Ou cil qui fist Apocalis Nel vos sauroient il retraire : Por ço si m'en dei gie bien taire. N'en dirai plus, que n'oseroie; Trop halte chose envaïroie. Pliny and the author of the Apocalypse are here acknowledged as masters and authorities in the art of description. In other places of the same work there is a very liberal use of natural history, such as is common in many versions of the history of Alexander. There is, for example, a long description of the precious clothes of Briseide (Cressida) at her departure, especially of her mantle, which had been given to Calchas by an Indian poet in Upper India. 378 CHAP. ROMANCE It was made by nigromancy, of the skin of the beast Dindialos, which is hunted in the shadowless land by the savage people whose name is Cenocefali; and the fringes of the mantle were not of the sable, but of a "beast of price" that dwells in the water of Paradise:— Calchas Pharaoh :- Dedans le flum de Paradis Sont et conversent, ço set l'on Se c'est vrais que nos en lison. had a tent which had belonged to Diomedes tant la conduit Qu'il descendi al paveillon Qui fu al riche Pharaon, Cil qui noa en la mer roge. In such passages of ornamental description the names of strange people and of foreign kings have the same kind of value as the names of precious stones, and sometimes they are introduced on their own account, apart from the precious work of Arabian or Indian artists. Of this sort is the "dreadful sagittary," who is still retained in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida on the ultimate authority (when it comes to be looked into) of Benoit de Sainte More.¹ A quotation by M. Gaston Paris (Hist. litt. de la France, xxx. p. 210), from the unpublished romance of 1 Il ot o lui un saietaire Qui molt fu fels et deputaire : Des le nombril tot contreval Ot cors en forme de cheval: Il n'est riens nule s'il volsist Que d'isnelece n'ateinsist: Cors, chiere, braz, a noz semblanz Avoit, mes n'ert pas avenanz. 1. 12,207. V 379 PEDANTRY Ider (Edeyrn, son of Nudd), shows how this fashion of rich description and allusion had been overdone, and how it was necessary, in time, to make a protest against it. Kings' pavilions were a favourite subject for rhetoric, and the poet of Ider explains that he does not approve of this fashion, though he has pavilions of his own, and can describe them if he likes, as well as any one : Tels diz n'a fors savor de songe, Tant en acreissent les paroles: Mes jo n'ai cure d'iperboles : Yperbole est chose non voire, Qui ne fu et qui n'est a croire, C'en est la difinicion : Mes tant di de cest paveillon Qu'il n'en a nul soz ciel qu'il vaille. Many poets give themselves pains to describe gardens and pavilions and other things, and think they are beautifying their work, but this is all dreaming and waste of words; I will have no such hyperbole. (Hyperbole means by definition that which is untrue and incredible.) I will only say of this pavilion that there was not its match under heaven. The author, by his definition of hyperbole¹ in this place, secures an ornamental word with which he con- soles himself for his abstinence in other respects. This piece of science is itself characteristic of the rhetorical 1 Chaucer, who often yields to the temptations of "Hyperbole" in this sense of the word, lays down the law against impertinent decorations, in the rhetorical instruction of Pandarus to Troilus, about Troilus's letter to Cressida (B. ii. 1. 1037) :- Ne jompre eek no discordaunt thing y fere As thus, to usen termes of phisyk; In loves termes hold of thy matere The forme alwey, and do that it be lyk ; For if a peyntour wolde peynte a pyk With asses feet, and hede it as an ape, It cordeth naught; so nere it but a jape. 380 CHAP. ROMANCE enterprise of the Romantic School; of the way in which Pliny, Isidore, and other encyclopaedic authors were turned into decorations. The taste for such things is common in the early and the later Middle Ages; all that the romances did was to give a certain amount of finish and neatness to the sort of work that was left comparatively rude by the earlier pedants. There may be discovered in some writers a preference for classical subjects in their ornamental digressions, or for the graceful forms of allegory, such as in the next century were collected for the Garden of the Rose, and still later for the House of Fame. Thus Chrestien seems to assert his superiority of taste and judgment when, instead of Oriental work, he gives Enid an ivory saddle carved with the story of Aeneas and Dido (Erec, 1. 5337); or when, in the same book, Erec's coronation mantle, though it is fairy work, bears no embroidered designs of Broceliande or Avalon, but four allegorical figures of the quadrivial sciences, with a reference by Chrestien to Macrobius as his authority in describing them. One function of this Romantic School, though not the most important, is to make an immediate literary profit out of all accessible books of learning. It was a quick-witted school, and knew how to turn quotations and allusions. Much of its art, like the art of Euphues, is bestowed in making pedantry look attractive. The narrative material imported and worked up in the Romantic School is, of course, enormously more im- portant than the mere decorations taken out of Solinus V 381 ROMANTIC ADVENTURES or Macrobius. It is not, however, with the principal masters the most important part of their study. Chrestien, for example, often treats his adventures with great levity in comparison with the serious psychological passages; the wonder often is that he should have used so much of the common stuff of adventures in poems where he had a strong com- manding interest in the sentiments of the personages. There are many irrelevant and unnecessary adventures in his Erec, Lancelot, and Yvain, not to speak of his unfinished Perceval; while in Cliges he shows that he did not rely on the commonplaces of adventure, on the regular machinery of romance, and that he might, when he chose, commit himself to a novel almost wholly made up of psychology and sentiment. What- ever the explanation may be in this case, it is plain enough both that the adventures are of secondary value as compared with the psychology, in the best romances, and that their value, though inferior, is still considerable, even in some of the best work of the "courtly makers." "" The greatest novelty in the twelfth-century narrative materials was due to the Welsh; not that the "matter of Britain" was quite overwhelming in extent, or out of proportion to the other stores of legend and fable. The matter of Rome the Great (not to speak again of the old epic "matter of France and its various later romantic developments) included all known antiquity, and it was recruited continually by new importations from the East. The "matter of Rome," however, the tales of Thebes and Troy and 382 CHAP. ROMANCE the wars of Alexander, had been known more or less for centuries, and they did not produce the same effect as the discovery of the Celtic stories. Rather, it may be held that the Welsh stories gave a new value to the classical authorities, and suggested new imagina- tive readings. As Chaucer's Troilus in our own time has inspired a new rendering of the Life and Death of Jason, so (it would seem) the same story of Jason got a new meaning in the twelfth century when it was read by Benoit de Sainte More in the light of Celtic romance. Then it was discovered that Jason and Medea were no more, and no less, than the adventurer and the wizard's daughter, who might play their parts in a story of Wales or Brittany. The quest of the Golden Fleece and the labours of Jason are all re- duced from the rhetoric of Ovid, from their classical dignity, to something like what their original shape may have been when the story that now is told in Argyll and Connaught of the King's Son of Ireland was told or chanted, ages before Homer, of a king's son of the Greeks and an enchantress beyond sea. Something indeed, and that of the highest conse- quence, as will be seen, was kept by Benoit from his reading of the Metamorphoses; the passion of Medea, namely. But the story itself is hardly distinguishable in kind from Libeaux Desconus. It is not easy to say how far this treatment of Jason may be due to the Welsh example of similar stories, and how far to the general medieval disrespect for everything in the classics except their matter. The Celtic precedents can scarcely have been without influence on this very V 383 CELTIC STORIES remarkable detection of the "Celtic element" in the voyage of the Argonauts, while at the same time Ovid ought not to be refused his of medieval romantic adventure. share in the credit Virgil, Ovid, and Statius are not to be underrated as sources of chival- rous adventure, even in comparison with the un- questioned riches of Wales or Ireland. There is more than one distinct stage in the progress of the Celtic influence in France. The cul- mination of the whole thing is attained when Chres- tien makes the British story of the capture and rescue of Guinevere into the vehicle of his most finished and most courtly doctrine of love, as shown in the examples of Lancelot and the Queen. Before that there are several earlier kinds of Celtic romance in French, and after that comes what for modern readers is more attractive than the typical work of Chrestien and his school,-the eloquence of the old French prose, with its languor and its melancholy, both in the prose Lancelot and in the Queste del St. Graal and Mort Artus. In Chrestien everything is clear and positive; in these prose romances, and even more in Malory's English rendering of his "French book," is to be heard the indescribable plaintive melody, the sigh of the wind over the enchanted ground, the spell of pure Romance. Neither in Chrestien of Troyes, nor yet in the earlier authors who dealt more simply than he with their Celtic materials, is there anything to compare with this later prose. In some of the earlier French romantic work, in some of the lays of Marie de France, and in the 384 CHAP. ROMANCE fragments of the poems about Tristram, there is a kind of simplicity, partly due to want of skill, but in its effect often impressive enough. The plots made use of by the medieval artists are some of them among the noblest in the world, but none of the poets were strong enough to bring out their value, either in translating Dido and Medea, or in trying to educate Tristram and other British heroes according to the manners of the Court of Champagne. There are, however, differences among the misinterpretations and the failures. No French romance appears to have felt the full power of the story of Tristram and Iseult; no French poet had his mind and imagina- tion taken up by the character of Iseult as more than one Northern poet was possessed by the tragedy of Brynhild. But there were some who, without developing the story as Chaucer did with the story of Troilus, at least allowed it to tell itself clearly. The Celtic magic, as that is described in Mr. Arnold's Lectures, has scarcely any place in French romance, either of the earlier period or of the fully-developed and successful chivalrous order, until the time of the prose books. books. The French poets, both the simpler sort and the more elegant, appear to have had a gift for ignoring that power of vagueness and mystery which is appreciated by some of the prose authors of the thirteenth century. They seem for the most part to have been pleased with the incidents of the Celtic stories, without appreciating any charm of style that they may have possessed. They treated them, in fact, as they treated Virgil and Ovid; and V 385 CELTIC STORIES there is about as much of the "Celtic spirit" in the French versions of Tristram, as there is of the genius of Virgil in the Roman d'Eneas. In each case there is something recognisable of the original source, but it has been translated by minds imperfectly responsive. In dealing with Celtic, as with Greek, Latin, or Oriental stories, the French romancers were at first generally content if they could get the matter in the right order and present it in simple language, like tunes played with one finger. One great advantage of this procedure is that the stories are intelligible; the sequence of events is clear, and where the original conception has any strength or beauty it is not distorted, though the colours may be faint. This earlier and more temperate method was abandoned in the later stages of the Romantic School, when it often happened that a simple story was taken from the "matter of Britain" and overlaid with the chival- rous conventional ornament, losing its simplicity without being developed in respect of its characters or its sentiment. As an example of the one kind may be chosen the Lay of Guingamor, one of the lays of Marie de France;¹ as a example of the other, the Dutch romance of Gawain (Walewein), which is taken from the French and exhibits the results of a common process of adulteration. Or, again, the story of Guinglain, as told by Renaud de Beaujeu with an irrelevant "courtly" digression, may be 1 Not included in the editions of her works (Roquefort, Warnke); edited by M. Gaston Paris in the eighth volume of Romania along with the lays of Doon, Tidorel, and Tiolet. · 2 C 386 CHAP. ROMANCE compared with the simpler and more natural versions in English (Libeaus Desconus) and Italian (Carduino), as has been done by M. Gaston Paris; or the Conte du Graal of Chrestien with the English Sir Perceval of Galles. Guingamor is one of the best of the simpler kind of romances. The theme is that of an old story, a story which in one form and another is extant in native Celtic versions with centuries between them. In essentials it is the story of Ossian in the land of youth; in its chief motive, the fairy-bride, it is akin to the old Irish story of Connla. It is different from both in its definite historical manner of treating the subject. The story is allowed to count for the full value of all its incidents, with scarcely a touch to heighten the importance of any of them. It is the argument of a story, and little more. Even an argument, however, may present some of the vital qualities of a fairy story, as well as of a tragic plot, and the conclusion, especially, of Guingamor is very fine in its own way, through its perfect clearness. There was a king in Britain, and Guingamor was his nephew. The queen fell in love with him, and was driven to take revenge for his rejection of her; but being less cruel than other queens of similar fortune, she planned nothing worse than to send him into the lande aventureuse, a mysterious forest on the other side of the river, to hunt the white boar. This white boar of the adventurous ground had already taken off ten knights, who had gone out to hunt it and had never returned. Guingamor followed V 387 GUINGAMOR the boar with the king's hound. In his wanderings he came on a great palace, with a wall of green marble and a silver shining tower, and open gates, and no one within, to which he was brought back later by a maiden whom he met in the forest. The story of their meeting was evidently, in the original, a story like that of Weland and the swan-maidens, and those of other swan or seal maidens, who are caught by their lovers as Weland caught his bride. But the simplicity of the French story here is in excess of what is required even by the illiterate popular versions of similar incidents. Guingamor, after two days in the rich palace (where he met the ten knights of the king's court, who had disappeared before), on the third day wished to go back to bring the head of the white boar to the king. His bride told him that he had been there for three hundred years, and that his uncle. was dead, with all his retinue, and his cities fallen and destroyed. But she allowed him to go, and gave him the boar's head and the king's hound; and told him after he had crossed the river into his own country to eat and drink nothing. He was ferried across the river, and there he met a charcoal-burner and asked for news of the king. The king had been dead for three hundred years, he was told; and the king's nephew had gone hunting in the forest and had never been seen again. Guin- gamor told him his story, and showed him the boar's head, and turned to go back. 388 CHAP. ROMANCE Now it was after nones and turning late. He saw a wild apple-tree and took three apples from it; but as he tasted them he grew old and feeble and fell from his horse. The charcoal-burner had followed him and was going to help him, when he saw two damsels richly dressed, who came to Guingamor and reproached him for his forgetfulness. They put him gently on a horse and brought him to the river, and ferried him over, along with his hound. The charcoal-burner went back to his own house at nightfall. The boar's head he took to the king of Britain that then was, and told the story of Guingamor, and the king bade turn it into a lay. The simplicity of all this is no small excellence in a story. If there is anything in this story that can affect the imagination, it is there unimpaired by any- thing foreign or cumbrous. It is unsupported and undeveloped by any strong poetic art, but it is sound and clear. In the Dutch romance of Walewein, and doubtless in its French original (to show what is gained by the moderation and restriction of the earlier school), another story of fairy adventures has been dressed up to look like chivalry. The story of Walewein is one that appears in collections of popular tales; it is that of Mac Iain Direach in Campbell's West Highland Tales (No. xlvi.), as well as of Grimm's Golden Bird. The romance observes the general plot of the popular story; indeed, it is singular among the romances in its close adherence to the order of events as given in .... į V WALEWEIN 389 the traditional oral forms. Though it contains 11,200 lines, it begins at the beginning and goes on to the end without losing what may be considered the original design. But while the general economy is thus retained, there are large digressions, and there is an enormous change in the character of the hero. While Guingamor in the French poem has little, if anything, to distinguish him from the adventurer of popular fairy stories, the hero in this Dutch romance is Gawain,-Gawain the Courteous, in splendid armour, playing the part of Mac Iain Direach. The discrepancy is very great, and there can be little doubt that the story as told in Gaelic forty years ago by Angus Campbell, quarryman, is, in respect of the hero's condition and manners, more original than the medieval romance. Both versions are simple enough in their plot, and their plot is one and the same: the story of a quest for something wonderful, leading to another quest and then another, till the several problems are solved and the adventurer returns successful. In each story (as in Grimm's version also) the Fox appears as a helper. white glaive of light. Mac Iain Direach is sent to look for the Blue Falcon; the giant who owns the Falcon sends him to the big Women of the Isle of Jura to ask for their The Women of Jura ask for the bay filly of the king of Erin; the king of Erin sends him to woo for him the king's daughter of France. Mac Iain Direach wins all for himself, with the help of the Fox. Gawain has to carry out similar tasks: to find and 390 CHAP. ROMANCE bring back to King Arthur a magical flying Chess- board that appeared one day through the window and went out again; to bring to King Wonder, the owner of the Chessboard, "the sword of the strange rings"; to win for the owner of the sword the Princess of the Garden of India. Some things in the story, apart from the hero, are different from the popular versions. In Walewein there appears quite plainly what is lost in the Gaelic and the German stories, the character of the strange land in which the quests are carried out. Gawain has to pass through or into a hill to reach the land of King Wonder; it is not the common earth on the other side. The three castles to which he comes have all of them water about them; the second of them, Ravensten, is an island in the sea; the third is beyond the water of Purgatory, and is reached by two perilous bridges, the bridge of the sword and the bridge under water, like those in Chrestien's Lancelot. There is a distinction here, plain enough, between the human world, to which Arthur and his Court belong, and the other world within the hill, and the castles beyond the waters. But if this may be supposed to belong to an older form of the story not evident in the popular versions, a story of adventures in the land of the Dead, on the other hand the romance has no conception of the meaning of these passages, and gets no poetical result from the chances here offered to it. It has nothing like the vision of Thomas of Erceldoune; the waters about the magic island are tame and shallow; the castle beyond the Bridge of V 391 WALEWEIN Dread is loaded with the common, cheap, pedantic "hyperboles," like those of the Pèlerinage or of Benoit's Troy. Gawain is too heavily armoured, also, and even his horse Gringalet has a reputation of his own; all inconsistent with the lightness of the fairy tale. Gawain in the land of all these dreams is burdened still by the heavy chivalrous conventions. The world for him, even after he has gone through the mountain, is still very much the old world with the old stale business going on; especially tourna- ments and all their weariness. One natural result of all this is that the Fox's part is very much reduced. In the Gaelic story, Mac Iain Direach and his friend Gille Mairtean (the Lad of March, the Fox) are a pair of equals; they have no character, no position in the world, no station and its duties. They are quite careless, and they move freely. Gawain is slow, and he has to put in a certain amount of the common romantic business. The authors of that romantic school, if ever they talked shop, may have asked one another, "Where do you put your Felon Red Knight? Where do you put your doing away of the Ill Custom? or your tournaments?" and the author of Walewein would have had an answer ready. Everything is there all right that is to say, all the things that every one else has, all the mechanical business of romance. The Fox is postponed to the third adventure, and there, though he has not quite grown out of his original likeness to the Gille Mairtean, he is evidently constrained. Sir Gawain of the romance, this courteous but rather dull and middle-aged gentle- ぐ ​392 CHAP. ROMANCE man in armour, is not his old light-hearted com- panion. Still, though this story of Gawain is weighed down by the commonplaces of the Romantic School, it shows through all its encumbrances what sort of story it was that impressed the French imagination at the beginning of the School. It may be be permitted to believe that the story of Walewein existed once in a simpler and clearer form, like that of Guingamor. The curious sophistication of Guinglain by Renaud de Beaujeu has been fully described and criticised by M. Gaston Paris in one of his essays (Hist. litt. de la France, xxx. p. 171). His comparison with the English and Italian versions of the story brings out the indiffer- ence of the French poets to their plot, and their readi- ness to sacrifice their unities of action for the sake of irrelevant sentiment. The story is as simple as that of Walewein; an expedition, this time, to rescue a lady from enchantment. She is bewitched in the form of a serpent, and freed by a kiss (le fier baiser). There are various adventures on the journey, which has some resemblance to that of Gareth in the Morte d'Arthur, and of the Red Cross Knight in Spenser, which is founded upon Malory's Gareth. One of the adven- tures is in the house of a beautiful sorceress, who treats Guinglain with small consideration. Renaud de Beaujeu, in order to get literary credit from his handling of this romantic episode, brings Guinglain back to this enchantress after the real close of the 1 Britomart in the House of Busirane has some resemblance to the conclu- sion of Libius Disconius. V 393 TRISTRAM AND YSEULT story, in a kind of sentimental show-piece or appendix, by which the story is quite overweighted and thrown off its balance for the sake of a rhetorical demon- stration. This of course belongs to the later period of romance, when the simpler methods had been discredited; but the simpler form, much nearer the fashion of popular stories, is still kept more or less by the English and the Italian rhymes of "Sir Lybeaux." The most remarkable examples of the earlier French romantic methods are presented by the fragments remaining of the old Anglo-Norman poems on Tristram and Yseult, by Béroul and Thomas, especially the latter;¹ most remarkable, because in this case there is the greatest contra- diction between the tragic capabilities of the story and the very simple methods of the Norman poets. It is a story that might test the tragic strength and eloquence of any poet in any age of the world; the poetical genius of Thomas is shown in his abstinence from effort. Hardly anything could be simpler. He does very little to fill out or to elaborate the story; he does nothing to vitiate his style; there is little ornament or emphasis. The story itself is there, as if the poet thought it an impertinence to add any harmonies of his own. If it were only extant as a whole, it would be one of the most notable of poems. Where else is there anything like it, for sincerity and for thinness? 1 Fr. Michel: Tristan: Recueil de ce qui reste des Poëmes relatifs à ses Aventures. London, 1835. Cf. Gaston Paris, "Tristan et Iseut," in the Revue de Paris for 15th April 1894. 394 CHAP. ROMANCE This poet of Tristram does not represent the prevalent fashion of his time. The eloquence and the passion of the amorous romances are commonly more effusive, and seldom as true. The lost Tristram of Chrestien would probably have made a contrast with the Anglo-Norman poem in this respect. Chres- tien of Troyes is at the head of the French Romantic School, and his interest is in the science of love; not in ancient rude and passionate stories, such as the story of Tristram-for it is rude and ancient, even in the French of Thomas-not in the "Celtic magic,' except for decorative and incidental purposes, but in psychology and analysis of the emotions, and in the appropriate forms of language for such things. "" It is impossible (as M. Gaston Paris has shown) to separate the spirit of French romance from the spirit of the Provençal lyric poetry. The romances represent in a narrative form the ideas and the spirit which took shape as lyric poetry in the South; the romances are directly dependent upon the poetry of the South for their principal motives. The courtesy of the Provençal poetry, with its idealism and its pedantry, its psychological formalism, its rhetoric of antithesis and conceits, is to be found again in the narrative poetry of France in the twelfth century, just as, in the thirteenth, all the floods of lyrical idealism are collected in the didactic reservoir of the Romaunt of the Rose. The dominant interest in the French romances is the same as in the Provençal lyric poetry and in the Romaunt of the Rose; namely, the idealist or courteous science V 395 THE ART OF LOVE of love. The origins of this mode of thought are difficult to trace fully. The inquiry belongs more immediately to the history of Provence than of France, for the romancers are the pupils of the Provençal school; not independent practitioners of the same craft, but directly indebted to Provence for some of their main ideas and a good deal of their rhetoric. In Provence itself the origins are partly to be found in the natural (i.e. inexplicable) development of popular love-poetry, and in the corresponding progress of society and its senti- ments; while among the definite influences that can be proved and explained, one of the strongest is that of Latin poetry, particularly of the Art of Love. About this there can be no doubt, however great may seem to be the interval between the ideas of Ovid and those of the Provençal lyrists, not to speak of their greater scholars in Italy, Dante and Petrarch. The pedantry of Ovid was taken seriously, for one thing, in an age when everything systematic was valuable just because it was a system; when every doctrine was profitable. For another thing, they found in Ovid the form, at least, of devotion, and again the Art of Love was not their only book. There were other writings of Ovid and works of other poets from whom the Middle Ages learned their lesson of chivalrous service; not for the most part, it must be confessed, from the example of "Paynim Knights," but far more from the classical "Legend of Good Women," from the passion of Dido and the other heroines. It is true that there were some names of ancient heroes that were held in 396 CHAP. ROMANCE honour; the name of Paris is almost inseparable from the name of Tristram, wherever a medieval poet has occasion to praise the true lovers of old time, and Dante followed the common form when he brought the names together in his fifth canto. But what made by far the strongest impression on the Middle Ages was not the example of Paris or of Leander, nor yet the passion of Catullus and Propertius, who were then unknown, but the poetry of the loyalty of the heroines, the fourth book of the Aeneid, the Heroides of Ovid, and certain parts of the Metamorphoses. If anything literary can be said to have taken effect upon the temper of the Middle Ages, so as to produce the manners and sentiments of chivalry, this is the literature to which the largest share of influence must be ascribed. The ladies of Romance all owe allegiance, and some of them are ready to pay it, to the queens of the Latin poets.¹ 1 A fine passage is quoted from the romance of Ider in the essay cited above, where Guenloïe the queen finds Ider near death and thinks of killing herself, like Phyllis and other ladies of the old time, who will welcome her. It is the "Saints' Legend of Cupid," many generations before Chaucer, in the form of an invocation to Love, the tyrant :- Bel semblant ço quit me feront Les cheitives qui a toi sont Qui s'ocistrent par druerie D'amor; mout voil lor compainie : D'amor me recomfortera La lasse Deïanira, Qui s'encroast, et Canacé, Eco, Scilla, Fillis, Pronné, Ero, Biblis, Dido, Mirra, Tisbe, la bele Hypermnestra, Et des autres mil et cinc cenz. Amor! por quoi ne te repenz De ces simples lasses destruire? Trop cruelment te voi deduire : Pechié feiz que n'en as pitié ; V 397 ROMANCE IN OVID Virgil's Dido and Ovid's Medea taught the eloquence of love to the French poets, and the first chivalrous lovers are those who have learned to think poorly of the recreant knights of antiquity. The French romantic authors were scholars in the poetry of the Provençal School, but they also knew a good deal independently of their Provençal masters, and did not need to be told everything. They read the ancient authors for themselves, and drew their own conclusions from them. They were influenced by the special Provençal rendering of the common ideas of chivalry and courtesy; they were also affected immediately by the authors who influenced the Provençal School. Few things are more instructive in this part of literature than the story of Medea in the Roman de Troie of Benoit de Sainte More. It might even claim to be the representative French romance, for it con- tains in an admirable form the two chief elements common to all the dominant school-adventure (here reduced from Ovid to the scale of a common fairy story, as has been seen already) and sentimental elo- quence, which in this particular story is very near its original fountain-head. It is to be noted that Benoit is not in the least Nuls deus fors toi ne fait pechié ! De ço est Tisbé al dessus, Que por lié s'ocist Piramus; Amors, de ço te puet loer Car a ta cort siet o son per; Ero i est o Leander: Si jo i fusse avec Ider, Aise fusse, ço m'est avis, Com alme qu'est en paraïs. 398 CHAP. ROMANCE troubled by the Latin rhetoric when he has to get at the story. Nothing Latin, except the names, and nothing rhetorical remains to show that the story came from Ovid, and not from Blethericus or some other of his fellow-romancers in Wales,¹ so long, that is, as the story is merely concerned with the Golden Fleece, the Dragon, the Bulls, and all the tasks im- posed on Jason. But one essential thing is retained by Benoit out of the Latin which is his authority, and that is the way in which the love of Medea for Jason is dwelt upon and described. This is for medieval poetry one of the chief sources of the psychology in which it took delight,-an original and authoritative representation of the beginning and growth of the passion of love, not yet spoilt by the pedantry which later displayed itself unrestrained in the following generations of amatory poets, and which took its finest form in the poem of Guillaume de Lorris ; but yet at the same time giving a starting-point and some encouragement to the later pedants, by its study of the different degrees of the passion, and by the success with which they are explained and made interesting. This is one of the masterpieces and one of the standards of composition in early French romance; and it gives one of the most singular proofs of the dependence of modern on ancient literature, in certain respects. It would not be easy to prove any real connexion between Homer and the Sagas, in order to explain the resemblances of temper, and even 1 Blethericus, or Bréri, is the Welsh authority cited by Thomas in his Tristram. Cf. Gaston Paris, Romania, viii. p. 427. V 399 THE ROMANTIC REVOLUTION of incident, between them; but in the case of the medieval romances there is this direct and real de- pendence. The Medea of Apollonius Rhodius is at the beginning of medieval poetry, in one line of descent (through Virgil's Dido as well as Ovid's Medea); and it would be hard to overestimate the accumulated debt of all the modern poets whose rhetoric of passion, whether they know it or not, is derived somehow from the earlier medieval masters of Dante or Chaucer, Boccaccio or Spenser. The "medieval" character of the work of Chrestien and his contemporaries is plain enough. But "medi- eval" and other terms of the same sort are too apt to impose themselves on the mind as complete de- scriptive formulas, and in this case the term "medi- eval" ought not to obscure the fact that it is modern literature, in one of its chief branches, which has its beginning in the twelfth century. No later change in the forms of fiction is more important than the twelfth- century revolution, from which all the later forms and constitutions of romance and novel are in some degree or other derived. It was this revolution, of which Chrestien was one of the first to take full advantage, that finally put an end to the old local and provincial restrictions upon narrative. The older schools of epic are bound to their own nation or tribe, and to the family traditions. These restrictions are no hindrance to the poetry of Homer, nor to the plots and conversa- tions of the Sagas. Within these local restrictions. the highest form of narrative art is possible. Never- theless the period of these restrictions must come to 400 CHAP ROMANCE an end; the heroic age cannot last for ever. The merit of the twelfth-century authors, Benoit, Chrestien, and their followers, is that they faced the new problems and solved them. In their productions it may be seen how the Western world was moving away from the separate national traditions, and beginning the course of modern civilisation with a large stock of ideas, subjects, and forms of expression common to all the nations. The new forms of story might be defective in many ways, thin or formal or extravagant in com- parison with some of the older modes; but there was no help for it, there was no progress to be made in any other way. The first condition of modern progress in novel- writing, as in other more serious branches of learning, was that the author should be free to look about him, to reflect and choose, to pick up his ideas and his matter anyhow. He was turned out of the old limited region of epic tradition. The nations had several centuries to themselves, in the Dark Ages, in which they were at liberty to compose Homeric poems ("if they had a mind "), but by the twelfth century that time was over. The romancers of the twelfth century were in the same position as modern authors in regard to their choice of subjects. Their subjects were not prescribed to them by epic tradition. They were more or less reflective and self-conscious literary men, citizens of the universal world, ready to make the most of their education. They are the sophists of medieval literature; emancipated, enlightened, and intelligent persons, with an apparatus of rhetoric, a V 401 THE SOPHISTS OF ROMANCE set of abstract ideas, a repertory of abstract sentiments, which they could apply to any available subject. In this sophistical period, when the serious interest of national epic was lost, and when stories, collected from all the ends of the earth, were made the receptacles of a common, abstract, sentimental pathos, it was of some importance that the rhetoric should be well managed, and that the sentiment should be refined. The great achievement of the French poets, on account of which they are to be remembered as founders and bene- factors, is that they went to good masters for instruc- tion. Solid dramatic interpretation of character was beyond them, and they were not able to make much of the openings for dramatic contrast in the stories on which they worked. But they were caught and held by the language of passion, the language of Dido and Medea; language not dramatic so much as lyrical or musical, the expression of universal passion, such as might be repeated without much change in a thou- sand stories. In this they were happily guided. The greater drama, the stronger characters, appeared in due time; but the dramas and the novels of Europe would not have been what they are, without the medieval elaboration of the simple motives, and the practice of the early romantic schools in executing variations on Love and Jealousy. It may be remarked that there were sources more remote and even more august, above and beyond the Latin poets, from whom the medieval authors copied their phrasing, in so far as the Athenian tragedy affected the Latin poets, directly or indirectly, in their great declama- 1 2 D 402 CHAP. ROMANCE tory passages, which in turn affected the Middle Ages. The history of this school has no end, for it merges in the history of the romantic schools that are still flourishing, and will be continued by their successors. One of the principal lines of progress may be indicated, to conclude this discourse on Epic Poetry. "" The twelfth-century romances are in most things the antithesis to Homer, in narrative. They are fanciful, conceited, thin in their drama, affected in their sentiments. They are like the "heroic romances of the seventeenth century, their descendants, as compared with the strong imagination of Cervantes or Shakespeare, who are the representatives, if not of the Homeric line, at any rate of the Homeric principles, in their intolerance of the formally pathetic or heroic, and who have all the great modern novelists on their side. But the early romantic schools, though they are generally formal and sentimental, and not dramatic,.. have here and there the possibilities of a stronger drama and a truer imagination, and seem at times almost to have worked themselves free from their pedantry. There is sentiment and sentiment; and while the pathos of medieval romance, like some of the effusion of medieval lyric, is often merely formal repetition of phrases, it is sometimes more natural, and sometimes the mechanical fancy seems to quicken into true poetical vision, or at least to make room for a sane V 403 CHRESTIEN OF TROYES appreciation of real life and its incidents. Chrestien of Troyes shows his genius most unmistakably in his occasional surprising intervals of true description and natural feeling, in the middle of his rhetoric; while even his sustained rhetorical dissertations, like those of the Roman de la Rose in the next century, are not absolutely untrue, or uncontrolled by observation of actual manners. Often the rhetorical apparatus interferes in the most annoying way with the clear vision. In the Chevalier au Lion, for example, there is a pretty sketch of a family party-a girl reading a romance to her father in a garden, and her mother coming up and listening to the story— from which there is a sudden and annoying change to the common impertinences of the amatory pro- fessional novelist. This is the passage, with the two kinds of literature in abrupt opposition :- Messire Yvain goes into the garden, and his people follow; and he sees a goodly gentleman reclining on a cloth of silk and leaning on his elbow; and a maiden was sitting before him reading out of a romance, I know not whose the story. And to listen to the romance a lady had drawn near; that was her mother, and he was her father, and well might they be glad to look on her and listen to her, for they had no other child. She was not yet sixteen years old, and she was so fair and gentle that the God of Love if he had seen her would have given himself to be her slave, and never would have bestowed the love of her on any other than himself. For her sake, to serve her, he would have made himself man, would have put off his deity, and would have stricken himself with the dart whose wound is never healed, except a disloyal physician tend it. It is not right that any should recover from that wound, unless there be disloyalty in it; and whoever is otherwise healed, he never loved with loyalty. 404 CHAP. ROMANCE Of this wound I could talk to you without end, if it pleased you to listen; but I know that some would say that all my talk was idleness, for the world is fallen away from true love, and men know not any more how to love as they ought, for the very talk of love is a weariness to them! (11. 5360-5396). This short passage is representative of Chrestien's work, and indeed of the most successful and influ- ential work of the twelfth-century schools. It is not, like some affected kinds of romance, entirely cut off from reality. But the glimpses of the real world are occasional and short; there is a flash of pure day- light, a breath of fresh air, and then the heavy-laden, enchanted mists of rhetoric and obligatory sentiment come rolling down and shut out the view. It is possible to trace out in some detail a line of progress in medieval romance, in which there is a victory in the end for the more ingenuous kind of sentiment; in which the rhetorical romantic forms are altered and strengthened to bear the weight of true imagination. This line of progress is nothing less than the earlier life of all the great modern forms of novel; a part of European history which deserves some study from those who have leisure for it. The case may be looked at in this way. The romantic schools, following on the earlier the earlier heroic literature, generally substituted a more shallow, formal, limited set of characters for the larger and freer portraits of the heroic age, making up for this defect in the personages by extravagance in other respects—in the incidents, the phrasing, the senti- V 405 ENID The great mental pathos, the rhetorical conceits. advantage of the new school over the old was that it was adapted to modern cosmopolitan civilisation; it left the artist free to choose his subject anywhere, and to deal with it according to the laws of good society, without local or national restrictions. But the earlier work of this modern enlightenment in the Middle Ages was generally very formal, very meagre in imagination. The progress of literature was to fill out the romantic forms, and to gain for the new cosmopolitan schemes of fiction the same sort of substantial contents, the same command of human nature and its variety, as belong (with local or national restrictions) to some at any rate of the earlier epic authors. This being so, one of the interests of the study of medieval romance must be the discovery of those places in which it departs from its own dominant conventions, and seems to aim at something different from its own nature: at the recovery of the fuller life of epic for the benefit of romance. Epic fulness of life within the limits of romantic form-that might be said to be the ideal which is not attained in the Middle Ages, but towards which many medieval writers seem to be making their way. Chrestien's story of Geraint and Enid (Geraint has to take the name of Erec in the French) is one of his earlier works, but cannot be called immature in comparison with what he wrote afterwards. In Chrestien's Enid there is not a little superfluity of the common sort of adventure. The story of 406 CHAP. ROMANCE Enid in the Idylls of the King (founded upon the Welsh Geraint, as given in Lady Charlotte Guest's Mabinogion) has been brought within compass, and a number of quite unnecessary adventures have been cut out. Yet the story here is the same as Chrestien's, and the drama of the story is not the pure invention of the English poet. Chrestien has all the principal motives, and the working out of the problem is the same. In one place, indeed, where the Welsh romance, the immediate source of Tennyson's Enid, has shortened the scene of recon- ciliation between the lovers, the Idyll has restored something like the proportions of the original French. Chrestien makes Erec speak to Enid and renounce all his ill-will, after the scene in which "the brute Earl" is killed; the Welsh story, with no less effect, allows the reconciliation to be taken for granted when Geraint, at this point in the history, with no speech of his reported, lifts Enid on his own horse. The Idyll goes back (apparently without any direct knowledge of Chrestien's version) to the method of Chrestien. The story of Enid in Chrestien is very unlike the other stories of distressed and submissive wives; it has none of the ineradicable falsity of the story of Griselda. How much is due to Chrestien for this can hardly be reckoned, in our ignorance of the materials he used. But taking into account the other passages, like that of the girl reading in the garden, where Chrestien shows a distinct original appreciation of certain aspects of life, it cannot be V 407 ENID far wrong to consider Chrestien's picture of Enid as mainly his own; and, in any case, this picture is one of the finest in medieval romance. There is no comparison between Chrestien of Troyes and Homer, but it is not impious to speak of Enid along with Nausicaa, and there are few other ladies of romance who may claim as much as this. The adventure of the Sparrowhawk, one of the finest pieces of pure romance in the poetry of this century, is also one of the finest in the old French, and in many ways very unlike the commonplaces of chivalry, in the simplicity of the household where Enid waits on her father's guest and takes his horse to the stable, in the sincerity and clearness with which Chrestien indicates the gentle breeding and dignity of her father and mother, and the pervading spirit of grace and loyalty in the whole scene.¹ In the story of Enid, Chrestien has a subject which recommends itself to modern readers. The misunderstanding between Enid and her husband, and the reconciliation, are not peculiarly medieval, though the adventures through which their history is worked out are of the ordinary romantic common- place. Indeed the relation of husband and wife in this 1 The Welsh version has the advantage here in noting more fully than Chrestien the beauty of age in Enid's mother: "And he thought that there could be no woman fairer than she must have been in the prime of her youth." Chrestien says merely (at the end of his story, 1. 6621):- Bele est Enide et bele doit Estre par reison et par droit, Que bele dame est mout sa mere Bel chevalier a an son pere. 408 CHAP. ROMANCE story is rather exceptionally divergent from the current romantic mode, and from the conventional law that true love between husband and wife was impossible. Afterwards, in his poem of Lancelot (le Chevalier de la Charrette), Chrestien took up and worked out this conventional and pedantic theory, and made the love of Lancelot and the Queen into the standard for all courtly lovers. In his Enid, however, there is nothing of this. At the same time, the courtly and chivalrous mode gets the better of the central drama in his Enid, in so far as he allows himself to be dis- tracted unduly from the pair of lovers by various "hyperboles" of the Romantic School; there are a number of unnecessary jousts and encounters, and a mysterious exploit of Erec in a magic garden, which is quite out of connexion with the rest of the story. The final impression is that Chrestien wanted strength of mind or inclination to concentrate himself on the drama of the two lovers. The story is taken too lightly. In Cliges, his next work, the dramatic situation is much less valuable than in Enid, but the workman- ship is far more careful and exact, and the result is a story which may claim to be among the earliest of modern novels, if the Greek romances, to which it has a close relation, are not taken into account. The story has very little "machinery"; there are none of the marvels of the Faërie in it. There is a Thessalian witch (the heroine's nurse), who keeps well within the limits of possible witchcraft, and there is V 409 CLIGES the incident of the sleeping-draught (familiar in the ballad of the Gay Gosshawk), and that is all. The rest is a simple love-story (or rather a double love-story, for there is the history of the hero's father and mother, before his own begins), and the personages are merely true lovers, undistinguished by any such qualities as the sulkiness of Erec or the discretion of Enid. It is all pure sensibility, and as it happens the sensibility is in good keeping-not overdriven into the pedantry of the more quixotic troubadours and minnesingers, and not warped by the conventions against marriage. It is explained at the end that, though Cliges and Fenice are married, they are lovers still :- De s'amie a feite sa fame, Mais il l'apele amie et dame, Que por ce ne pert ele mie Que il ne l'aint come s'amie, Et ele lui autresi Con l'an doit feire son ami : Et chascun jor lor amors crut, N'onques cil celi ne mescrut, Ne querela de nule chose. Cliges, 1. 6753. This poem of Chrestien's is a collection of the finest specimens of medieval rhetoric on the eternal theme. There is little incident, and sensibility has it all its own way, in monologues by the actors and digressions by the author, on the nature of love. It is rather the sentiment than the passion that is here expressed in the "language of the heart"; but, however that may be, there are both delicacy and eloquence in the language. The pensive Fenice, who debates with her- 410 CHAP. ROMANCE self for nearly two hundred lines in one place (4410- 4574), is the ancestress of many later heroines. Meis Fenice est sor toz pansive; Ele ne trueve fonz ne rive El panser dont ele est anplie, Tant li abonde et mouteplie. Cliges, 1. 4339. In the later works of Chrestien, in Yvain, Lancelot, and Perceval, there are new developments of romance, more particularly in the story of Lancelot and Guine- vere. But these three later stories, unlike Cliges, are full of the British marvels, which no one would wish away, and yet they are encumbrances to what we must regard as the principal virtue of the poet-his skill of analysis in cases of sentiment, and his interest in such cases. Cliges, at any rate, however far it may come short of the Chevalier de la Charrette and the Conte du Graal in variety, is that one of Chrestien's poems, it might be said that one of the twelfth-century French romances, which best corresponds to the later type of novel. It is the most modern of them; and at the same time it does not represent its own age any the worse, because it also to some extent anticipates the fashions of later literature. In this kind of romance, which reduces the cost of the "machinery," and does without enchanters, dragons, magic mists, and deadly castles, there are many other examples besides Cliges. A hundred years after Chrestien, one of his clever- est pupils wrote the Provençal story of Flamenca," 1 Ed. Paul Meyer, 1865. V 4II FLAMENCA a work in which the form of the novel is completely disengaged from the unnecessary accidents of romance, and reaches a kind of positive and modern clearness very much at variance in some respects with popular ideas of what is medieval. The Romance of the medieval Romantic School attains one of its highest and most distinctive points in Flamenca, and shows what it had been aiming at from the beginning- namely, the expression in an elegant manner of the ideas of the Art of Love, as understood in the polite society of those times. Flamenca is nearly con- temporary with the Roman de la Rose of Guillaume de Lorris. Its inspiring ideas are the same, and though its influence on succeeding authors is indis- cernible, where that of the Roman de la Rose is wide- spread and enduring, Flamenca would have as good a claim to be considered a representative masterpiece of medieval literature, if it were not that it appears to be breaking loose from medieval conventions where the Roman de la Rose makes all it can out of them. Flamenca is a simple narrative of society, with the indispensable three characters-the husband, the lady, and the lover. The scene of the story is princi- pally at the baths of Bourbon, in the then present day ; and of the miracles and adventures of the more marvellous and adventurous romances there is nothing left but the very pleasant enumeration of the names of favourite stories, in the account of the minstrelsy at Flamenca's wedding. The author knew all that was to be known in romance, of Greek, Latin, or British invention-Thebes and Troy, Alexander and 412 CHAP. ROMANCE Julius Caesar, Samson and Judas Maccabeus, Ivain and Gawain and Perceval, Paris and Tristram, and all Ovid's Legend of Good Women-but out of all these studies he has retained only what suited his purpose. He does not compete with the Greek or the British champions in their adventures among the romantic forests. Chrestien of Troyes is his master, but he does not try to copy the magic of the Lady of the Fountain, or the Bridge of the Sword, or the Castle of the Grail. He follows the doctrine of love expounded in Chrestien's Lancelot, but his hero is not sent wandering at random, and is not made to display his courtly emotions among the ruins and shadows of the lost Celtic mythology, like Lancelot in Chrestien's poem. The life described in Flamenca is the life of the days in which it was composed; and the hero's task is to disguise himself as a clerk, so as to get a word with the jealously-guarded lady in church on Sundays, while giving her the Psalter to kiss after the Mass. Flamenca is really the triumph of Ovid, with the Art of Love, over all his Gothic competitors out of the fairy tales. The Provençal poet has discarded everything but the essential dominant interests, and in so doing has gone ahead of his master Chrestien, who (except in Cliges) allowed himself to be distracted between opposite kinds of story, between the school of Ovid and the school of Blethericus; and who, even in Cliges, was less consistently modern than his Provençal follower. Flamenca is the perfection and completion of medieval romance in one kind and in one direction. V 413 FLAMENCA It is all sentiment; the ideal courtly sentiment of good society and its poets, made lively by the author's knowledge of his own time and its manners, and his decision not to talk about anything else. It is perhaps significant that he allows his heroine the romance of Flores and Blanchefleur for her reading, an older story of true lovers, after the simpler pattern of Greek romance, which the author of Flamenca apparently feels himself entitled to refer to with the condescension of a modern and critical author towards some old- fashioned prettiness. He is completely self-possessed and ironical with regard to his story. His theme is the idle love whose origin is explained by Ovid; his personages are nothing to him but the instruments of the symphony which he composes and directs: sopra lor vanità che par persona, over and through their graceful inanity, passes the stream of sentiment, the shifting, flickering light which the Provençal author has borrowed from Ovid and transferred for his own purposes to his own time. It is perhaps the first complete modern appropriation of classical examples in literary art; for the poem of Flamenca is classical in more than one sense of the term-classical, not only because of its comprehension of the spirit of the Latin poet and his code of manners and sentiment, but because of its clear proportions and its definite abstract lines of composition; because of the self-possession of the author and his subordination of details and rejection of irrelevances. Many things are wanting to Flamenca which it did not suit the author to bring in. It was left to 414 CHAP. ROMANCE. other greater writers to venture on other and larger schemes with room for more strength and individuality of character, and more stress of passion, still keeping the romantic framework which had been designed by the masters of the twelfth century, and also very much of the sentimental language which the same masters had invented and elaborated. The story of the Chastelaine de Vergi¹ (dated by its last editor between 1282 and 1288) is an example of a different kind from Flamenca; still abstract in its personages, still sentimental, but wholly unlike Flamenca in the tragic stress of its sentiment and in the pathos of its incidents. There is no plot in Flamenca, or only just enough to display the author's resources of eloquence; in the Chastelaine de Vergi there is no rhetorical expansion or effusion, but instead of that the coherent closely-reasoned argument of a romantic tragedy, with nothing in it out of keeping with the conditions of "real life." It is a moral example to show the disastrous result of breaking the first law of chivalrous love, which enjoins loyal secrecy on the lover; the tragedy in this case arises from the strong compulsion of honour under which the commandment is transgressed. There was a knight who was the lover of the Chastelaine de Vergi, unknown to all the world. Their love was discovered by the jealous machina- tions of the Duchess of Burgundy, whom the knight had neglected. The Duchess made use of her knowledge to insult the Chastelaine; the 1 Ed. G. Raynaud, Romania, xxi. p. 145. V 415 LA CHASTELAINE DE VERGI Chastelaine died of a broken heart at the thought that her lover had betrayed her; the knight found her dead, and threw himself on his sword to make amends for his unwilling disloyalty. Even a summary like this may show that the plot has capabilities and opportunities in it; and though the scheme of the short story does not allow the author to make use of them in the full detailed manner of the great novelists, he understands what he is about, and his work is a very fine instance of sensitive and clearly-executed medieval narrative, which has nothing to learn (in its own kind, and granting the conditions assumed by the author) from any later fiction. The story of the Lady of Vergi was known to Boccaccio, and was repeated both by Bandello and by Queen Margaret of Navarre. It is time to consider how the work of the medieval romantic schools was taken up and con- tinued by many of the most notable writers of the period which no longer can be called medieval, in which modern literature makes a new and definite beginning; especially in the works of the two modern poets who have done most to save and adapt the inheritance of medieval romance for modern forms of literature-Boccaccio and Chaucer. The development of romance in these authors is not always and in all respects a gain. Even the pathetic stories of the Decameron (such as the Pot of Basil, Tancred and Gismunda, William of Cabestaing) seem to have lost something by the 416 CHAP. ROMANCE adoption of a different kind of grammar, a more learned rhetoric, in comparison with the best of the simple French stories, like the Chastelaine de Vergi. This is the case in a still greater degree where Boccaccio has allowed himself a larger scale, as in his version of the old romance of Flores and Blanchefleur (Filocolo), while his Teseide might be taken as the first example in modern history of the pernicious effect of classical studies. The Teseide is the story of Palamon and Arcita. The original is lost, but it evidently was a French romance, probably not a long one; one of the favourite well-defined cases or problems of love, easily understood as soon as stated, presenting the rivalry of the two noble kinsmen for the love of the lady Emily. It might have been made into one of the stories of the Decameron, but Boccaccio had other designs for it. He wished to write a classical epic in twelve books, and not very fortunately chose this simple theme as the ground-work of his operations. The Teseide is the first of the solemn row of modern epics; “reverend and divine, abiding without motion, shall we say that they have being?" Everything is to be found in the Teseide that the best classical traditions require in epic-Olympian machinery, catalogues of armies, descriptions of works of art to compete with the Homeric and Virgilian shields, elaborate battles, and epic similes, and funeral games. Chaucer may have been at one time tempted by all this magnificence; his final version of the story, in the Knight's Tale, is a proof V 417 BOCCACCIO AND CHAUCER among other things of his critical tact. He must have recognised that the Teseide, with all its ambi- tion and its brilliancy of details, was a failure as a story; that this particular theme, at any rate, was not well fitted to carry the epic weight. These personages of romance were not in training for the heavy classical panoply. So he reduced the story of Palamon and Arcita to something not very different from what must have been its original scale as a romance. His modifications of Boccaccio here are a lesson in the art of narrative which can hardly be overvalued by students of that mystery. Chaucer's procedure in regard to his romantic subjects is often very difficult to understand. How firm and unwavering his critical meditations and calculations were may be seen by a comparison of the Knight's Tale with its Italian source. At other times and in other stories he appears to have worked on different principles, or without much critical study at all. The Knight's Tale is a com- plete and perfect version of a medieval romance, worked out with all the resources of Chaucer's literary study and reflexion; tested and considered and corrected in every possible way. The story of Constance (the Man of Law's Tale) is an earlier work in which almost everything is lacking that is found in the mere workmanship of the Knight's Tale; though not, of course, the humanity, the pathos, of Chaucer. The story of Constance appears to have been taken by Chaucer from one of the 2 E 418 CHAP. ROMANCE least artificial specimens of medieval romance, the kind of romance that worked up in a random sort of way the careless sequence of incidents in a popular traditional tale. Just as the tellers of the stories in Campbell's Highland Tales, and other authentic collections, make no scruple about proportion where their memory happens to fail them or their irrelevant fancy to distract them, but go on easily, dropping out a symmetrical adventure here and there, and repeating a favourite a favourite "machine" if necessary or unnecessary; so the story of Constance forgets and repeats itself. The voice is the voice of Chaucer, and so are the thoughts, but the order or disorder of the story is that of the old wives' tales when the old wives are drowsy. All the principal situations occur twice over; twice the heroine is persecuted by a wicked mother-in-law, twice sent adrift in a rudder- less boat, twice rescued from a churl, and so on. In this story the poetry of Chaucer appears as something almost independent of the structure of the plot; there has been no such process of design and reconstruction as in the Knight's Tale. It is almost as strange to find Chaucer in other stories, as in the Franklin's Tale and the Clerk's Tale, putting up with the most abstract medieval con- ventions of morality; the Point of Honour in the Franklin's Tale, and the unmitigated virtue of Griselda, are hopelessly opposed to anything like dramatic truth, and very far inferior as motives to the ethical ideas of many stories of the twelfth century. The truth of Enid would have given no opportunity V 419 CHAUCER for the ironical verses in which Chaucer takes his leave of the Clerk of Oxford and his heroine. In these romances Chaucer leaves some old medieval difficulties unresolved and unreconciled, without attempting to recast the situation as he found it in his authorities, or to clear away the element of unreason in it. He takes the framework as he finds it, and embroiders his poetry over it, leaving an obvious discrepancy between his poetry and its subject- matter. In some other stories, as in the Legend of Good Women, and the tale of Virginia, he is content with pathos, stopping short of vivid drama. In the Knight's Tale he seems to have deliberately chosen a compromise between the pathetic mood of pure romance and a fuller dramatic method; he felt, apparently, that while the contrast between the two rivals admitted of drama, the position of the lady Emily in the story was such as to prevent a full dramatic rendering of all the characters. The plot required that the lady Emily should be left without much share of her own in the action. The short and uncompleted poem of Anelida gains in significance and comes into its right place in Chaucer's works, when it is compared with such examples of the older school as the Chastelaine de Vergi. It is Chaucer's essay in that delicate abstract fashion of story which formed one of the chief accomplishments of the French Romantic School. It is his acknowledgment of his debt to the artists of sensibility, the older French authors, "that can make 420 CHAP. ROMANCE of sentiment," and it proves, like all his writings, how quick he was to save all he could from the teaching of his forerunners, for the profit of "that fair style that has brought him honour." To treat a simple problem, or "case," of right and wrong in love, was a favourite task of medieval courtly poetry, narrative and lyric. Chaucer in his Anelida takes up this old theme again, treating it in a form between narrative and lyric, with the pure abstract melody that gives the mood of the actors apart from any dramatic individuality. He is one of the Extractors of Quintessence, and his Anelida is the formal spirit, impalpable yet definite, of the medieval courtly romance. It is not here, but in a poem the opposite of this in fulness and richness of drama, that Chaucer attains a place for himself above all other authors as the poet who saw what was needed to transform medieval romance out of its limitations into a new kind of narrative. Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde is the poem in which medieval romance passes out of itself into the form of the modern novel. What Cervantes and what Fielding did was done first by Chaucer ; and this was the invention of a kind of story in which life might be represented no longer in a conventional or abstract manner, or with sentiment and pathos instead of drama, but with characters adapting them- selves to different circumstances, no longer obviously breathed upon by the master of the show to convey his own ideas, but moving freely and talking like men and women. The romance of the Middle Ages V 421 TROILUS AND CRISEYDE comes to an end, in one of the branches of the family tree, by the production of a romance that has all the freedom of epic, that comprehends all good and evil, and excludes nothing as common or unclean which can be made in any way to strengthen the impression of life and variety. Chaucer was not tempted by the phantasm of the Epic Poem like Boccaccio, and like so many of the great and wise in later generations. The substance of Epic, since his time, has been ap- propriated by certain writers of history, as Fielding has explained in his lectures on that science in Tom Jones. The first in the line of these modern historians is Chaucer with his Troilus and Criseyde, and the wonder still is as great as it was for Sir Philip Sidney :- Chaucer undoubtedly did excellently in his Troylus and Cresseid; of whom, truly I know not whether to mervaile more, either that he in that mistie time could see so clearely, or that wee in this cleare age walke so stumblingly after him. His great work grew out of the French Romantic School. The episode of Troilus and Briseide in Benoit's Roman de Troie is one of the best passages in the earlier French romance; light and unsubstantial like all the work of that School, but graceful, and not untrue. It is all summed up in the monologue of Briseide at the end of her story (1. 20,308) :- Dex donge bien a Troylus ! Quant nel puis amer ne il mei A cestui¹ me done et otrei. 1 i.e. Diomede. 422 CHAP. ROMANCE Molt voldreie aveir cel talent Que n'eüsse remembrement Des ovres faites d'en arriere: Ço me fait mal à grant manière ! Boccaccio took up this story, from the Latin version of the Tale of Troy, the Historia Trojana of Guido. His Filostrato is written on a different plan from the Teseide; it is one of his best works. He did not make it into an epic poem; the Filostrato, Boccaccio's Troilus and Cressida, is a romance, differing from the older French romantic form not in the design of the story, but in the new poetical diction in which it is composed, and its new poetical ideas. There is no false classicism in it, as there is in his Palamon and Arcita; it is a novel of his own time, a story of the Decameron, only written at greater length, and in verse. Chaucer, the "great translator," took Boccaccio's poem and treated it in his own way, not as he had dealt with the Teseide. The Teseide, because there was some romantic improbability in the story, he made into a romance. The story of Troilus he saw was strong enough to bear a stronger handling, and instead of leaving it a romance, graceful and super- ficial as it is in Boccaccio, he deepened it and filled it with such dramatic imagination and such variety of life as had never been attained before his time by any romancer; and the result is a piece of work that leaves all romantic convention behind. The Filostrato of Boccaccio is a story of light love, not much more substantial, except in its new poetical language, than the story of Flamenca. In Chaucer the passion of V 423 CONCLUSION Troilus is something different from the sentiment of romance; the changing mind of Cressida is represented with an understanding of the subtlety and the tragic meaning of that life which is "Time's fool." Pandarus is the other element. In Boccaccio he is a personage of the same order as Troilus and Cressida; they all might have come out of the Garden of the Decameron, and there is little to choose between them. Chaucer sets him up with a character and a philosophy of his own, to represent the world outside of romance. The Comic Genius claims a share in the tragedy, and the tragedy makes room for him, because the tragic personages, "Tragic Comedians " Tragic Comedians" as they are, can bear the strain of the contrast. The selection of personages and motives is made in another way in the romantic schools, but this poem of Chaucer's is◄ not romance. It is the fulfilment of the prophecy of Socrates, just before Aristophanes and the tragic poet had to be put to bed at the end of the Symposium, that the best author of tragedy is the best author of comedy also. It is the freedom of the imagination, beyond all the limits of partial and conventional forms. APPENDIX NOTE A (p. 154) Rhetoric of the Western and Northern Alliterative Poems "" ANY page of the Anglo-Saxon poets, and of the "Elder Edda," will show the difference between the "continuous and the "discrete "--the Western and the Northern-modes of the alliterative verse. It may be convenient to select some passages here for reference. (1) As an example of the Western style ("the sense variously drawn out from one verse to another "), the speech of the “old warrior" stirring up vengeance for King Froda (Beowulf, 1. 2041 sq.; see above p. 80):- þonne cwið æt beore se de beah gesyhð, eald æscwiga, se de eall geman garcwealm gumena (him bið grim sefa) onginned geomormod geongum cempan purh hreðra gehygd higes cunnian, wigbealu weccean, ond þæt word acwyd: "Meaht du, min wine, mece gecnawan, pone pin fæder to gefeohte bær under heregriman, hindeman side, dyre iren, þær hine Dene slogon, weoldon wälstowe, syddan Widergyld læg æfter hæleþa hryre, hwata Scyldingas ? Nu her para banena byre nathwylces, frætwum hremig, on flet gæð, mordres gylped ond pone madhum byreð pone pe pu mid rihte rædan sceoldest!" 426 EPIC AND ROMANCE دو (The "old warrior -no less a hero than Starkad himself, according to Saxo-bears a grudge on account of the slaying of Froda, and cannot endure the reconciliation that has been made. He sees the reconciled enemies still wearing the spoils of war, arm-rings, and even Froda's sword, and addresses Ingeld, Froda's son): Over the ale he speaks, seeing the ring, the old warrior, that remembers all, the spear-wrought slaying of men (his thought is grim), with sorrow at heart begins with the young champion, in study of mind to make trial of his valour, to waken the havoc of war, and thus he speaks : "Knowest thou, my lord? nay, well thou knowest the falchion that thy father bore to the fray, wearing his helmet of war, in that last hour, the blade of price, where the Danes him slew, and kept the field, when Withergyld was brought down after the heroes' fall; yea, the Danish princes slew him! See now, a son of one or other of the men of blood, glorious in apparel, goes through the hall, boasts of the stealthy slaying, and bears the goodly heirloom that thou of right shouldst have and hold !" (2) The Northern arrangement, with "the sense concluded in the couplet," is quite different from the Western style. There is no need to quote more than a few lines. The following passage is from the last scene of Helgi and Sigrun (C.P.B. i. p. 143; see p. 83 above-"Yet precious are the draughts,” etc.) :— Vel skolom drekka dýrar veigar þótt misst hafim munar ok landa ; skal engi maðr angr-lióð kveða, þótt mer á briósti benjar líti. Nú ero brúðir byrgðar í haugi, lofða dísir, hjá oss liðnom. The figure of Anadiplosis (or the "Redouble," as it is called in the Arte of English Poesie) is characteristic of a APPENDIX 427 certain group of Northern poems. See the note on this, with references, in C.P.B. i. p. 557. The poems in which this device appears are the poems of the heroines (Brynhild, Gudrun, Oddrun), the heroic idylls of the North. In these poems the repetition of a phrase, as in the Greek pastoral poetry and its descendants, has the effect of giving solemnity to the speech, and slowness of movement to the line. So in the Long Lay of Brynhild (C.P.B. i. p. 296):— svárar sifjar, svarna eiða, and (ibid.)— eiða svarna, unnar trygðir; hann vas fyr utan eiða svarna, eiða svarna, unnar trygðir; and in the Old Lay of Gudrun (C.P.B. i. p. 319)— Hverr vildi mer hnossir velja hnossir velja, ok hugat mæla. There are other figures which have the same effect: Gott es at ráða Rínar malmi, ok unandi auði styra, ok sitjandi sælo nióta. C.P.B. i. p. 296. But apart from these emphatic forms of phrasing, all the sentences are so constructed as to coincide with the divisions of the lines, whereas in the Western poetry, Saxon and Anglo- Saxon, the phrases are made to cut across the lines, the sentences having their own limits, independent of the beginnings and endings of the verses. NOTE B (p. 235) The Meeting of Kjartan and King Olaf Tryggvason (Laxdæla Saga, c. 40) Kjartan rode with his father east from Hjardarholt, and they parted in Northwaterdale; Kjartan rode on to the 428 EPIC AND ROMANCE ship, and Bolli, his kinsman, went along with him. There were ten men of Iceland all together that followed Kjartan out of goodwill; and with this company he rides to the harbour. Kalf Asgeirsson welcomes them all. Kjartan and Bolli took a rich freight with them. So they made them- selves ready to sail, and when the wind was fair they sailed out and down the Borg firth with a gentle breeze and good, and so out to sea. They had a fair voyage, and made the north of Norway, and so into Throndheim. There they asked for news, and it was told them that the land had changed its masters; Earl Hacon was gone, and King Olaf Tryggvason come, and the whole of Norway had fallen under his sway. King Olaf was proclaiming a change of law; men did not take it all in the same way. Kjartan and his fellows brought their ship into Nidaros. At that time there were in Norway many Icelanders who were men of reputation. There at the wharves were lying three ships all belonging to men of Iceland: one to Brand the Generous, son of Vermund Thorgrimsson; another to Hallfred the Troublesome Poet; the third ship was owned by two brothers, Bjarni and Thorhall, sons of Skeggi, east in Fleetlithe,-all these men had been bound for Iceland in the summer, but the king had arrested the ships because these men would not accept the faith that he was proclaiming. Kjartan was welcomed by them all, and most of all by Brand, because they had been well acquainted earlier. The Icelanders all took counsel together, and this was the upshot, that they bound themselves to refuse the king's new law. Kjartan and his mates brought in their ship to the quay, and fell to work to land their freight. King Olaf was in the town; he hears of the ship's coming, and that there were men in it of no small account. It fell out on a bright day in harvest-time that Kjartan's company saw a number of men going to swim in the river APPENDIX 429 Nith. Kjartan said they ought to go too, for the sport; and so they did. There was one man of the place who was far the best swimmer. Kjartan says to Bolli: "Will you try your swimming against this townsman ?" Bolli answers: "I reckon that is more than my strength." "I know not what is become of your hardihood," says Kjartan; "but I will venture it myself." "That you may, if you please," says Bolli. Kjartan dives into the river, and so out to the man that swam better than all the rest; him he takes hold of and dives under with him, and holds him under for a time, and then lets him go. After that they swam for a little, and then the stranger takes Kjartan and goes under with him, and holds him under, none too short a time, as it seemed to Kjartan. Then they came to the top, but there were no words between them. They dived together a third time, and were down longer than before. Kjartan thought it hard to tell how the play would end; it seemed to him that he had never been in so tight a place in his life. However, they come up at last, and strike out for the land. Then says the stranger: "Who may this man be?” Kjartan told his name. The townsman said: "You are a good swimmer; are you as good at other sports as at this?" Kjartan answers, but not very readily: "When I was in Iceland it was thought that my skill in other things was much of a piece; but now there is not much to be said about it." The townsman said: "It may make some difference to know with whom you have been matched; why do you not ask?" Kjartan said: "I care nothing for your name." The townsman says: "For one thing you are a good 430 EPIC AND ROMANCE man of your hands, and for another you bear yourself other- wise than humbly; none the less shall you know my name and with whom you have been swimming; I am Olaf Tryggvason, the king." Kjartan makes no answer, and turns to go away. He had no cloak, but a coat of scarlet cloth. The king was then nearly dressed. He called to Kjartan to wait a little ; Kjartan turned and came back, rather slowly. Then the king took from his shoulders a rich cloak and gave it to Kjartan, saying he should not go cloakless back to his men. Kjartan thanks the king for his gift, and goes to his men and shows them the cloak. They did not take it very well, but thought he had allowed the king too much of a hold on him. Things were quiet for a space; the weather began to harden with frost and cold. The heathen men said it was no wonder they had ill weather that autumn; it was all the king's newfangledness and the new law that had made the gods angry. The Icelanders were all together that winter in the town; and Kjartan took the lead among them. In time the weather softened, and men came in numbers to the town at the summons of King Olaf. Many men had taken the Christian faith in Throndheim, but those were more in number who were against it. One day the king held an assembly in the town, out on the point of Eyre, and declared the Faith with many eloquent words. The Thronds had a great multitude there, and offered battle to the king on the spot. The king said they should know that he had fought against greater powers than to think of scuffling with clowns in Throndheim. Then the yeomen were cowed, and gave in wholly to the king, and many men were christened; then the assembly broke up. That same evening the king sends men to the Icelanders' APPENDIX 431 inn to observe and find out how they talked. When the messengers came there, there was a loud sound of voices within. Kjartan spoke, and said to Bolli: "Kinsman, are you willing to take this faith of the king's?" "I am not," says Bolli, "for it seems to me a feeble, pithless thing." Says Kjartan: "Seemed the king to you to have no threats for those that refused to accept his will?" Says Bolli: "Truly the king seemed to us to come out clearly and leave no shadow on that head, that they should have hard measure dealt them." << No man's underling will I be," says Kjartan, “while I can keep my feet and handle a sword; it seems to me a pitiful thing to be taken thus like a lamb out of the pen, or a fox out of the trap. I hold it a far better choice, if one must die, to do something first that shall be long talked of after." (( What will you do?" says Bolli. “I will not make a secret of it," says Kjartan; “burn the king's house, and the king in it." “I call that no mean thing to do," says Bolli; "but yet it will not be, for I reckon that the king has no small grace and good luck along with him; and he keeps a strong watch day and night." Kjartan said that courage might fail the stoutest man; Bolli answered that it was still to be tried whose courage would hold out longest. Then many broke in and said that this talk was foolishness; and when the king's spies had heard so much, they went back to the king and told him how the talk had gone. On the morrow the king summons an assembly; and all the Icelanders were bidden to come. When all were met, the king stood up and thanked all men for their presence, 432 EPIC AND ROMANCE those who were willing to be his friends and had taken the Faith. Then he fell to speech with the Icelanders. The king asks if they will be christened. They make little sound of agreement to that. The king said that they might make a choice that would profit them less. Which of you was it that thought it convenient to burn me in my house?” Then says Kjartan: "You think that he the honesty to confess it, he that said this. may see him." will not have But here you See thee I may," says the king, " and a man of no mean imagination; yet it is not in thy destiny to see my head at thy feet. And good enough cause might I have to stay thee from offering to burn kings in their houses in return for their good advice; but because I know not how far thy thought went along with thy words, and because of thy manly declaration, thou shalt not lose thy life for this; it may be that thou wilt hold the Faith better, as thou speakest against it more than others. I can see, too, that it will bring the men of all the Iceland ships to accept the Faith the same day that thou art christened of thine own free will. It seems to me also like enough that thy kinsmen and friends in Iceland will listen to what thou sayest when thou art come out thither again. It is not far from my thought that thou, Kjartan, mayst have a better Faith when thou sailest from Norway than when thou camest hither. Go now all in peace and liberty whither you will from this meeting; you shall not be penned into Christendom; for it is the word of God that He will not have any come to Him save in free will." There was much approval of this speech of the king's, yet chiefly from the Christians; the heathen men left it to Kjartan to answer as he would. Then said Kjartan: “We will thank you, Sir, for giving us your peace; this more APPENDIX 433 than anything would draw us to accept your Faith, that you renounce all grounds of enmity and speak gently altogether, though you have our whole fortunes in your hand to-day. So much I can say for the Faith I will accept in Norway, that I will think little of Thor next winter when I come to Iceland." Then answered the king, smiling: "It is well seen from the bearing of Kjartan that he thinks he has better surety in his strength and his weapons than there where Thor and Odin are." After that the assembly broke up. NOTE C (p. 295) Eyjolf Karsson : an Episode in the History of Bishop Gudmund Arason, A.D. 1222 (from Arons Saga Hjörleifssonar, c. 8, printed in Biskupa Sögur, i., and in Sturlunga, ii. pp. 312-347). [Eyjolf Karsson and Aron stood by Bishop Gudmund in his troubles, and followed him out to his refuge in the island of Grimsey, lying off the north coast of Iceland, about 30 miles from the mouth of Eyjafirth. There the Bishop was attacked by the Sturlungs, Sighvat (brother of Snorri Sturluson) and his son Sturla. His men were out- numbered; Aron was severely wounded. This chapter describes how Eyjolf managed to get his friend out of danger and how he went back himself and was killed. When many Now the story turns to Eyjolf and Aron. of Eyjolf's men were down, and some had run to the church, he took his way to the place where Aron and Sturla had met, and there he found Aron sitting with his weapons, and 2 F 434 EPIC AND ROMANCE all about were lying dead men and wounded. It is reckoned Eyjolf Aron says that nine men must have lost their lives there. asks his cousin whether he can move at all. that he can, and stands on his feet; and now they go both together for a while by the shore, till they come to a hidden bay; there they saw a boat ready floating, with five or six men at the oars, and the bow to sea. arrangement, in case of sudden need. Aron that he means the boat for both of them; giving out that he sees no hope of doing more for the Bishop at that time. This was Eyjolf's Now Eyjolf tells “But I look for better days to come," says Eyjolf. Il "It seems a strange plan to me," says Aron; "for I thought that we should never part from Bishop Gudmund in this distress; there is something behind this, and I vow that I will not go unless you go first on board.” "That I will not, cousin," says Eyjolf; "for it is shoal water here, and I will not have any of the oarsmen leave his oar to shove her off; and it is far too much for you to go afoot with wounds like yours. You will have to go on board." (C 'Well, put your weapons in the boat," says Aron, “and I will believe you." Aron now goes on board; and Eyjolf did as Aron asked him. Eyjolf waded after, pushing the boat, for the shallows went far out. And when he saw the right time come, Eyjolf caught up a battle-axe out of the stern of the boat, and gave a shove to the boat with all his might. "Good-bye, Aron," says Eyjolf; "we shall meet again when God pleases." And since Aron was disabled with wounds, and weary with loss of blood, it had to be even so; and this parting was a grief to Aron, for they saw each other no more. Now Eyjolf spoke to the oarsmen and told them to row APPENDIX 435 hard, and not to let Aron come back to Grimsey that day, and not for many a day if they could help it. They row away with Aron in their boat; but Eyjolf turns to the shore again and to a boat-house with a large ferry-boat in it, that belonged to the goodman Gnup. And at the same nick of time he sees the Sturlung company come tearing down from the garth, having finished their mischief there. Eyjolf takes to the boat-house, with his mind made up to defend it as long as his doom would let him. There were double doors to the boat-house, and he puts heavy stones against them. Brand, one of Sighvat's followers, a man of good condition, caught a glimpse of a man moving, and said to his com- panions that he thought he had made out Eyjolf Karsson there, and they ought to go after him. Sturla was not on the spot; there were nine or ten together. So they come to the boat-house. Brand asks who is there, and Eyjolf says it is he. Then you will please to come out and come before Sturla," says Brand. "Will you promise me quarter?" says Eyjolf. "There will be little of that," says Brand. Then it is for you to come on," says Eyjolf, “and for me to guard; and it seems to me the shares are ill divided.” Eyjolf had a coat of mail, and a great axe, and that was all. Now they came at him, and he made a good and brave defence; he cut their pike-shafts through; there were stout strokes on both sides. And in that bout Eyjolf breaks his axe-heft, and catches up an oar, and then another, and both break with his blows. And in this bout Eyjolf gets a thrust under his arm, and it came home. Some say that he broke the shaft from the spear-head, and let it stay in the wound. He sees now that his defence is ended. Then he made a dash out, and got through them, before they 436 EPIC AND ROMANCE knew. They were not expecting this; still they kept their heads, and a man named Mar cut at him and caught his ankle, so that his foot hung crippled. With that he rolls down the beach, and the sea was at the flood. In such plight as he was in, Eyjolf set to and swam; and swimming he came twelve fathoms from shore to a shelf of rock, and knelt there; and then he fell full length upon the earth, and spread his hands from him, turning to the East as if to pray. Now they launch the boat, and go after him. And when they came to the rock, a man drove a spear into him, and then another, but no blood flowed from either wound. So they turn to go ashore, and find Sturla and tell him the story plainly how it had all fallen out. Sturla held, and other men too, that this had been a glorious defence. He showed that he was pleased at the news. NOTE D (p. 411) Two Catalogues of Romances There are many references to books and cycles of romance in medieval literature-minstrels' enumerations of their stock-in-trade, and humorous allusions like those of Sir Thopas, and otherwise. There are two passages, among others, which seem to do their best to cover the whole ground, or at least to exemplify all the chief groups. One of these is that referred to in the text, from Flamenca; the other is to be found, much later, in the Complaint of Scotland (1549). I. FLAMENCA (11. 609-701) Qui volc ausir diverses comtes De reis, de marques e de comtes, Auzir ne poc tan can si volc ; APPENDIX 437 Anc null' aurella non lai colc, Quar l'us comtet de Priamus, E l'autre diz de Piramus; L'us contet de la bell'Elena Com Paris l'enquer, pois l'anmena ; L'autres comtava d'Ulixes, L'autre d'Ector et d'Achilles; L'autre comtava d'Eneas, E de Dido consi remas Per lui dolenta e mesquina ; L'autre comtava de Lavina Con fes lo breu el cairel traire A la gaita de l'auzor caire L'us contet d'Apollonices De Tideu e d'Etidiocles; L'autre comtava d'Apolloine Comsi retenc Tyr de Sidoine L'us comtet del rei Alexandri L'autre d'Ero et de Leandri; L'us dis de Catmus quan fugi Et de Tebas con las basti, L'autre contava de Jason E del dragon que non hac son ; L'us comte d'Alcide sa forsa, L'autre con tornet en sa forsa Phillis per amor Demophon ; L'us dis com neguet en la fon Lo bels Narcis quan s'i miret ; L'us dis de Pluto con emblet Sa bella moillier ad Orpheu; L'autre comtet del Philisteu Golias, consi fon aucis Ab treis peiras quel trais David; L'us diz de Samson con dormi, Quan Dalidan liet la cri; L'autre comtet de Machabeu Comen si combatet per Dieu; L'us comtet de Juli Cesar Com passet tot solet la mar, E no i preguet Nostre Senor Que nous cujes agues paor; 438 EPIC AND ROMANCE L'us diz de la Taula Redonda Que no i venc homs que noil responda Le reis segon sa conoissensa, Anc nuil jorn ne i failli valensa ; L'autre comtava de Galvain E del leo que fon compain Del cavallier qu'estors Luneta ; L'us diz de la piucella breta Con tenc Lancelot en preiso Cant de s'amor li dis de no ; L'autre comtet de Persaval Co venc a la cort a caval; L'us comtet d'Erec e d'Enida, L'autre d'Ugonet de Perida; L'us comtava de Governail Com per Tristan ac grieu trebail, L'autre comtava de Feniza Con transir la fes sa noirissa ; ; L'us dis del Bel Desconogut E l'autre del vermeil escut Que l'yras trobet a l'uisset ; L'autre comtava de Guiflet ; L'us comtet de Calobrenan, L'autre dis con retenc un an Dins sa preison Quec senescal Lo deliez car li dis mal; L'autre comtava de Mordret ; L'us retrais lo comte Duret Com fo per los Ventres faiditz E per Rei Pescador grazits ; L'us comtet l'astre d'Ermeli, L'autre dis com fan l'Ancessi Per gein lo Veil de la Montaina ; L'us retrais con tenc Alamaina Karlesmaines tro la parti, De Clodoveu e de Pipi Comtava l'us tota l'istoria ; L'autre dis con cazec de gloria Donz Lucifers per son ergoil; L'us diz del vallet de Nantoil, L'autre d'Oliveir de Verdu. APPENDIX 439 L'us dis lo vers de Marcabru, L'autre comtet con Dedalus Saup ben volar, et d'Icarus Co neguet per sa leujaria. Cascus dis lo mieil que sabia. Per la rumor dels viuladors E per brug d'aitans comtadors Hac gran murmuri per la sala. The allusions are explained by the editor, M. Paul Meyer. The stories are as follows: Priam, Pyramus, Helen, Ulysses, Hector, Achilles, Dido, Lavinia (how she sent her letter with an arrow over the sentinel's head, Roman d'Eneas, I. 8807, sq.), Polynices, Tydeus, and Eteocles; Apollonius of Tyre; Alex- ander; Hero and Leander; Cadmus of Thebes; Jason and the sleepless Dragon; Hercules; Demophoon and Phyllis (a hard passage); Narcissus; Pluto and the wife of Orpheus («Sir Orfeo "); David and Goliath; Samson and Dalila; Judas Maccabeus; Julius Caesar; the Round Table, and how the king had an answer for all who sought him; Gawain and Yvain ("of the lion that was companion of the knight whom Lunete rescued "¹); of the British maiden who kept Lancelot imprisoned when he refused her love; of Perceval, how he rode into hall; Ugonet de Perida (?); Governail, the loyal comrade of Tristram; Fenice and the sleeping-draught (Chrestien's Cliges, see p. 408, above); Guinglain (“Sir Libeaus "); Chrestien's Chevalier de la Charrette ("how the herald found the red shield at the entry," an allusion ex- plained by M. Gaston Paris, in Romania, xvi. p. 101) Guiflet, Calobrenan, Kay punished for his railing accusations; Mordred; how the Count Duret was dispossessed by the Vandals and welcomed by the Fisher King (?); the luck of Hermelin (?); the Old Man of the Mountain and his Assassins; the Wars of Charlemagne; Clovis and Pepin of 1 In a somewhat similar list of romances, in the Italian poem of L' Intelli- genza, ascribed to Dino Campagni (st. 75), Luneta is named Analida; possibly the origin of Chaucer's Anelida, a name which has not been clearly traced. 440 EPIC AND ROMANCE France; the Fall of Lucifer; Gui de Nanteuil; Oliver of Verdun; the Flight of Daedalus, and how Icarus was drowned through his vanity. The songs of Marcabrun, the troubadour, find a place in the list among the stories. The author of Flamenca has arranged his library, though there are some incongruities; Daedalus belongs properly to the "matter of Rome" with which the catalogue begins, and Lucifer interrupts the series of Chansons de geste. The "matter of Britain," however, is all by itself, and is well represented. II. THE COMPLAYNT OF SCOTLAND, c. vi. (Ed. J. A. H. Murray, E.E.T.S., pp. 62-64) [This passage belongs to the close of the Middle Ages, when the old epic and romantic books were falling into neglect. There is no distinction here between literary romance and popular tales; the once-fashionable poetical works are reduced to their original elements. Arthur and Gawain are no more respected than the Red Etin, or the tale of the Well at the World's End (the reading volfe in the text has no defender); the Four Sons of Aymon have become what they were afterwards for Boileau (Ep. xi. 20), or rather for Boileau's gardener. But, on the whole, the list represents the common medieval taste in fiction. The Chansons de geste have provided the Bridge of the Mantrible (from Oliver and Fierabras, which may be intended in the Flamenca reference to Oliver), and the Siege of Milan (see English Charlemagne Romances, E.E.T.S. part ii.), as well as the Four Sons of Aymon and Sir Bevis. The Arthurian cycle is popular; the romance of Sir Ywain (the Knight of the Lion) is here, however, the only one that can be definitely traced in the Flamenca list also, though of course there is a general correspondence in subject-matter. The classical APPENDIX 441 fables from Ovid are still among the favourites, and many of them are common to both lists. See Dr. Furnivall's note, in the edition cited, pp. lxxiii.-lxxxii.] Quhen the scheiphird hed endit his prolixt orison to the laif of the scheiphirdis, i meruellit nocht litil quhen i herd ane rustic pastour of bestialite, distitut of vrbanite, and of speculatioune of natural philosophe, indoctryne his nycht- bours as he hed studeit ptholome, auerois, aristotel, galien, ypocrites, or Cicero, quhilk var expert practicians in methamatic art. Than the scheiphirdis vyf said: my veil belouit hisband, i pray the to disist fra that tideus melan- colic orison, quhilk surpassis thy ingyne, be rason that it is nocht thy facultee to disput in ane profund mater, the quhilk thy capacite can nocht comprehend. ther for, i thynk it best that ve recreat our selfis vytht ioyus comonyng quhil on to the tyme that ve return to the scheip fald vytht our flokkis. And to begin sic recreatione i thynk it best that everie ane of vs tel ane gude tayl or fable, to pas the tyme quhil euyn. Al the scheiphirdis, ther vyuis and saruandis, var glaid of this propositione. than the eldest scheiphird began, and al the laif follouit, ane be ane in ther auen place. it vil be ouer prolixt, and no les tideus to reherse them agane vord be vord. bot i sal reherse sum of ther namys that i herd. Sum vas in prose and sum vas in verse: sum var stories and sum var flet taylis. the namis of them as eftir follouis: the taylis of cantirberrye, Robert le dyabil duc of Normandie, the tayl of the volfe of the varldis end, Ferrand erl of Flandris that mareit the deuyl, the taiyl of the reyde eyttyn vitht the thre heydis, the tail quhou perseus sauit andromada fra the cruel monstir, the prophysie of merlyne, the tayl of the giantis that eit quyk men, on fut by fortht as i culd found, vallace, the bruce, ypomedon, the tail of the three futtit dog of norrouay, Thir var 442 EPIC AND ROMANCE the tayl quhou Hercules sleu the serpent hidra that hed vij heydis, the tail quhou the king of est mure land mareit the kyngis dochtir of vest mure land, Skail gillenderson the kyngis sone of skellye, the tail of the four sonnis of aymon, the tail of the brig of the mantribil, the tail of syr euan, arthour's knycht, rauf collgear, the seige of millan, gauen and gollogras, lancelot du lac, Arthour knycht he raid on nycht vitht gyltin spur and candil lycht, the tail of flore- mond of albanye that sleu the dragon be the see, the tail of syr valtir the bald leslye, the tail of the pure tynt, claryades and maliades, Arthour of litil bertangge, robene hude and litil ihone, the meruellis of mandiueil, the tayl of the zong tamlene and of the bald braband, the ryng of the roy Robert, syr egeir and syr gryme, beuis of southamtoun, the goldin targe, the paleis of honour, the tayl quhou acteon vas transformit in ane hart and syne slane be his auen doggis, the tayl of Pirramus and tesbe, the tail of the amours of leander and hero, the tail how Iupiter transformit his deir love yo in ane cou, the tail quhou that iason van the goldin fleice, Opheus kyng of portingal, the tail of the goldin appil, the tail of the thre veird systirs, the tail quhou that dedalus maid the laborynth to keip the monstir minotaurus, the tail quhou kyng midas gat tua asse luggis on his hede because of his auereis. INDEX AAGE, Danish ballad, related to Helgi and Sigrun; cf. York Powell, C.P.B. i. 502, and Grimm Centenary Papers (1886), p. 47 Achilles, 13, 14, 22, 41, 45, 77 Aeneid, 21, 24 C Alboin the Lombard (O.E. Ælfwine, Albovine, king of the Lom- bards'), 26, 76-79, 95 n, 217 Alexander the Great, in old French poetry, 31; his Epistle (Anglo- Saxon version), 376 Aliscans, chanson de geste of the cycle of William of Orange, 339 Alvíssmál, in 'Elder Edda,' 130 Amadis of Gaul, a formal hero, 201, 233, 255 Ammius (O.N. Hamder): Hamðismál Andreas, old English poem on the legend of St. Andrew, 32, 58, 104, 376 Andvari, 133 | of Snorri Sturluson, his death at Flugumýri, 300 Aron Hjörleifsson (Arons Saga), a friend of Bishop Gudmund, 260, 294 sq., 433 sq. Asbjörnsen, P. Chr., 196 n Asdis, Grettir's mother, 248 n Askel: see Reykdala Saga Atlakviða, the Lay of Attila, 168 sq.: see Attila Atlamál, the Greenland Poem of Attila, 168-181: see Attila Atli and Rimgerd, Contention of, in Elder Edda,' 130 sq. ( Atli in Grettis Saga, his dying speech, 251 in Hávarðar Saga, 262 see Attila (O.E. Ætla, O.N. Atli), the Hun, adopted as a German hero in epic tradition, 25; different views of him in epic, 28; in Waltharius, 97; in Waldere, 100; in the Elder Edda,' 93, 96, 106, 117, 121 sq., 159, 168 sq. Aucassin et Nicolette, 357, 374 Audoin the Lombard (O.E. Eadwine), father of Alboin, 78 Angantyr, the Waking of, poem in Hervarar Saga, 84, 90, 129, 148 n Apollonius of Tyre, in Anglo-Saxon, 376 Ari Thorgilsson, called the Wise (Ari Fróði, A.D. 1067-1148), his Landnámabók and Konunga Æfi, 284; Ynglinga Saga, 320 Ariosto, 34, 35, 46, 369 Aristotle on the dramatic element in epic, 19 sq.; his summary of the Odyssey, 20; 42, 86, 139, 161, 184, 185 Arnaldos, romance del Conde, Spanish ballad, 374 Arni, Bishop of Skalholt (ob. 1298), his Life (Arna Saga), 306 Arni Beiskr (the Bitter), murderer < Aymon, Four Sons of, i.e. Renaus de Montauban (chanson de geste), 358, 440 BALDER, death of, 50, 90, 129, Bandamanna Saga, 'The Confeder- ates,' 212, 260, 264-269 Beatrice the Duchess, wife of Begon de Belin, mother of Gerin and Hernaudin, 347 sq. Begon de Belin, brother of Garin le Loherain, q.v. Benoit de Sainte More, his Roman de Troie, 377-378, 382 444 EPIC AND ROMANCE Beowulf, 80, 102 sq., 134, 166, 182-202 and the Odyssey, 11 and the Heliand, 33 Bergthora, Njal's wife, 218, 253-254 Bernier see Raoul de Cambrai Béroul see Tristram Bevis, Sir, 440 Biarkamál, 90 Bjargey see Havarðar Saga Bjorn, in Njála, and his wife, 262- 263 Blethericus, a Welsh author, 398 Boccaccio, his relation to the French Romantic School, and to Chaucer, 415-423 Bodvild, 109 Boethius On the Consolation of Philo- sophy, a favourite book, 53 Bolli, Gudrun's husband (Laxdæla Saga), 219, 238, 256, 428 sq.; kills Kjartan, 277 Bolli the younger, son of Bolli and Gudrun, 257 Bossu, on the Epic Poem, his opinion of Phaeacia, 36, 46 n Bréri, cited by Thomas as his authority for the story of Tristram: see Blethericus Brink, Dr. Bernhard Ten, some time Professor at Strassburg, 167 Broceliande visited by Wace, 30, 197 Brunanburh, poem of the battle of, 88 Brynhild, sister of Attila, wife of Gunnar the Niblung, passim long Lay of, in the Elder Edda' (al. Sigurðarkviða in Skamma), 96, 115 sq. Hell-ride of, 118 short Lay of (fragment), 119, 256 Danish ballad of: see Sivard Bugge, Dr. Sophus, Professor in Christiania, 89 n, 159 n Byrhtnoth: see Maldon | de Bordeaux, 357 sq.; history of, in Norwegian (Karlamagnus Saga), 318; in Spanish (chap-book), 341 n: see Pèlerinage de Charlemagne Charlot: see Huon de Bordeaux Charroi de Nismes, chanson de geste of the cycle of William of Orange, quoted, 356-357 Chaucer, 375; his relation to the French Romantic School, and to Boccaccio, 415-423 Chrestien de Troyes, 369, 383 his works, Tristan (lost), 394; Erec (Geraint and Enid), 6 380, 405, 408; Conte du Graal (Perceval), 374; Cliges, 381, 408-410, 439; Chevalier de la Charrette (Lancelot), 390, 408, 439; Yvain (Chevalier au Lion), 403, 404,439, 440 t his influence on the author of Flamenca, 410 sq. Codex Regius, 2365, 4to, in the King's Library, Copenhagen: see Edda, 'the Elder' Comédie Humaine, la, 215 Connla (the story of the fairy-bride): see Guingamor Coronemenz Looïs, chanson de geste of the cycle of William of Orange, quoted, 356 Corpus Poeticum Boreale, ed. G. Vig- fusson and F. York Powell, Oxford, 1883, passim Corsolt, a pagan, 356 Cressida, in Roman de Troie, 377; the story treated in different ways by Boccaccio and Chaucer, q.v. Cynewulf, the poet, 59 Cynewulf and Cyncheard (English Chronicle, A.D. 755), 6, 95 n DAG, brother of Sigrun, 83 Dandie Dinmont, 231 C.P.B., i.e. Corpus Poeticum Boreale, Dante, 35; his reference to William q.v. Campbell, J. F., of Islay, 196 n, 388 Casket of whalebone (the Franks casket), in the British Museum, subjects represented on it, 55; runic inscriptions, 56 (cf. Stephens, Runic Monuments, i. p. 470) Charles the Great, Roman Emperor (Charlemagne), different views of him in French Epic, 27; in Huon of Orange, 340 Dart, Song of the (Darraðarlióð, Gray's 'Fatal Sisters'), 90 Davenant, Sir William, on the heroic poem (Preface to Gondibert), quoted, 35 Deor's Lament, old English poem, 88, 133, 155 Drangey, island in Eyjafirth, north of Iceland, Grettir's refuge, 225 INDEX 445 Dryden and the heroic ideal, 35 Du Bartas, 35 EDDA, a handbook of the Art of Poetry, by Snorri Sturluson, 49, 160, 207 Edda,' the Elder,' 'the Poetic,' ' of Sæmund the Wise' (Codex Regius), 89, 108, 180 passim Egil the Bowman, Weland's brother, represented on the Franks casket (Egili), 55 Egil Skallagrímsson, 220, 248, 253 Einar Thorgilsson: see Sturla of Hvamm Ekkehard of St. Gall, author of Waltharius, 97 Elene, by Cynewulf, an old English poem on the legend of St. Helen (the Invention of the Cross), 58, 104, 376 Eneas, Roman d', 439 Enid see Chrestien de Troyes Erec: see Chrestien de Troyes Eric the Red, his Saga in Hauk's book, 54 Ermanaric (O.E. Eormenric, O.N. Jörmunrekr), 25; killed by the brothers of Suanihilda, 76: see Hamðismál Erp: see Hamðismál Exodus, old English poem of, 32, 104 Eyjolf Karsson, a friend of Bishop Gudmund, 295, 433 sq. Eyjolf Thorsteinsson: see Gizur Eyrbyggja Saga, the story of the men of Eyre, 214, 216, 231, 262, 291 FÆREYINGA SAGA, the story of the men of the Faroes (Thrond of Gata and Sigmund Brestisson), 236, 281 Faroese ballads, 207, 324 Fielding, Henry, 304 Fierabras, 440 Finn see Finnesburh Finnesburh, old English poem (frag- ment), published by Hickes from a Lambeth MS., now mislaid, 94 sq., 302 the spirit of Ovid, 410-414; romances named in, 436, 437, 440 Flóamanna Saga, the story of the people of Floi, 297 Flores et Blanchefleur, romance, re- ferred to in Flamenca, 413; trans- lated by Boccaccio (Filocolo), 416 Flosi the Burner, in Njála, 218, 219, 252-254 Flugumýri, a homestead in Northern Iceland (Skagafjord), Earl Gizur's house, burned October 1253, the story as given by Sturla, 297-302 Fóstbræðra Saga (the story of the two sworn brethren, Thorgeir and Thormod), 44 n; in Hauk's book, 54, 215, 223, 224; euphuistic interpolations in, 315 sq. Frey, poem of his wooing of Gerd (Skirnismál), in the 'Poetic Edda,' 50, 89, 108, 131 Frithiof the Bold, a romantic Saga, 283, 317, 320 sq. Froda (Fróðá), homestead in Olafsvík, near the end of Snæfellsnes, Western Iceland, a haunted house, Eyr- byggja Saga, 240 Froda (Frotho in Saxo Grammaticus), his story alluded to in Beowulf, 80, 83, 95 n, 188 Froissart and the courteous ideal, 375 Fromont, the adversary in the story of Garin le Loherain, q.v. GALOPIN the Prodigal, in the story of Garin le Loherain, 355 Gareth, in Malory's Morte d'Arthur, original of the Red Cross Knight in the Faery Queene, 392 Garin le Loherain (chanson de geste), 61 n, 344-356 Gawain killed dragons, 193: see Walewein Gawain and the Green Knight, allitera- tive poem, 207 Gay Gosshawk, ballad of the, 409 Genesis, old English poem of, 104, 157 Geraint, Welsh story, 406 Gerd: see Frey episode in Beowulf, giving more of Germania of Tacitus, 53 the story, 94 sq. Fiölsvinnsmál: see Svipdag Flamenca, a Provençal romance, by a follower of Chrestien de Troyes, in Gísla Saga, the story of Gisli the Out- law, 214, 224, 226, 238; its rela- tions to the heroic poetry, 241, 259 Giuki (Lat. Gibicho, O.E. Gifica), 446 EPIC AND ROMANCE father of Gunnar, Hogni, Gothorm, | Guinglain, romance, by Renaud de and Gudrun, q.v. Beaujeu see Libeaux Desconus Gizur Thorvaldsson, the earl, at Gundaharius (Gundicarius), the Bur- Flugumyri, 296, 297-302 Glam (Grettis Saga), 198, 225 Glum (Viga-Glúms Saga), 221-223, 260 and Raoul de Cambrai, 343 Gollancz, Mr., on the first riddle in the Exeter Book, 156 Gothorm, 117 Gray, his translations from the Ice- landic, 90, 181 n Gregory (St.) the Great, de Cura Pastorali, studied in Iceland, 69 Grendel, 190: see Beowulf gundian (O.E. Gúðhere, O.N. Gunnarr; Gunther in the Nibel- ungenlied, etc.), 25: see Gunnar, Gunther Gunnar of Lithend (Hlíðarendi), in Njáls Saga, 218; his death, 246 Gunnar, son of Giuki, brother of Gudrun, 117 sq., 168 sq. : see Gundaharius, Gunther Gunnlaug the Poet, called Worm- tongue, his story (Gunnlaugs Saga Ormstungu), 239, 321 Gudhere: see Gunther Grettis Saga, the story of Grettir the Gunther (Guntharius, son of Gibicho) Strong, 198, 215, 223, 224 Grimhild, mother of Gudrun, 126 Grimild's Revenge, Danish ballad (Grimilds Hævn), 122, 172 Grimm, 158 n; story of the Golden Bird, 388 Wilhelm, Deutsche Heldensage, 92 Grímnismál, in Elder Edda,' 130 Gripir, Prophecy of (Grípisspá) in the Elder Edda,' a summary of the Volsung story, 109 Groa, wife of Earl Gizur, q.v. Grógaldr: see Svipdag Grottasöngr (Song of the Magic Mill), 90 Gudmund Arason, Bishop of Hólar, 196, 294, 433 Gudmund, son of Granmar: see Sinfiotli in Waltharius, 97 sq.; in Waldere, 100: see Gundaharius, Gunnar HACON, King of Norway (A.D. 1217- 1263): see Hákonar Saga; his taste for French romances, 318 Hadubrand, son of Hildebrand, 94 Hagen (Hagano), in Waltharius, 97 sq. in Waldere (Hagena), 101, 239 in Sivard, q.v.: see Hogni Hákonar Saga, the Life of Hacon, Hacon's son, king of Norway (ob. 1263), written by Sturla, con- trasted with his history of Iceland, 305 sq. Hall, son of Earl Gizur, 300 Hama, 188 Hamlet in Saxo, 81 Gudmund the Mighty (Guðmundr inn | Hamðismál ('Poetic Edda'), Lay Ríki), in Ljósvetninga and other of the death of Ermanaric, 76, 81- Sagas, 216, 259 Gudny, wife of Sturla of Hvamm, q.v. | Gudrun (O.N. Guðrún), daughter of Giuki, sister of Gunnar and Hogni, wife of Sigurd, 26, 81, 117, 176 sq. in and Theodoric, the Old Lay of Gudrun (Guðrúnarkviða forna), 119, 126 Lay of (Guðrúnarkviða), 127 Lament of, or Chain of Woe (Tregrof Guðrúnar), 128, 247 Ordeal of, 128 daughter of Osvifr (Laxdæla Saga), 219, 257-259 France, 385-388 82, 125-126, 163 Harald, king of Norway (Hardrada), killed dragons, 193; his Saga referred to (story of Hreidar the Simple), 355; (Varangian cus- tom), 376 n king of Norway (Fairhair), in Egils Saga, 220 Harbarzliód: see Thor Harðar Saga ok Holmverja, the story of Hord and the men of the island, 244 n Hauk's Book, an Icelandic gentle- man's select library in the four- teenth century, 54, 55 Guingamor, Lay of, by Marie de Hávamál in 'Poetic Edda,' a gnomic miscellany, 90 INDEX 447 Hávarðar Saga Isfirðings, the story | Hrefna, Kjartan's wife, 256 of Howard of Icefirth, 228, 248- 250, 262 Hearne, Thomas, 91 Hedin, brother of Helgi, Hiorvard's son, 115 Heiðarviga Saga, the story of the battle on the Heath (connected with Eyrbyggja Saga), 240: see Viga-Styrr Heidreks Saga: see Hervarar Saga Heimskringla, Snorri's Lives of the Kings of Norway, abridged, 284 Helgi and Kara, 113 Hreidar the Simple, an unpromising hero, in Haralds Saga Harðráða, 355 Hrolf Kraki (Hroðulf in Beowulf), 191, 320 Hromund Greipsson, Saga of, 114 Hrothgar, 191 Hunding, 110 Huon de Bordeaux (chanson de geste), epic and romance combined inar- tistically in, 42, 62, 359-363 Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance, 34 Helgi, Hiorvard's son, and Swava, Hunferth, 192 113, 131 Helgi Hundingsbane and Sigrun, 83, 108 n, 110 sq., 239 Hêliand, old Saxon poem on the Gospel history, using the forms of German heroic poetry, 31, 104 Hengest see Finnesburh Heremod, 188 Herkja, 129 Hermes, in the Homeric hymn, 49 Hervarar Saga ok Heiðreks Konungs (Heiðreks Saga), one of the romantic mythical Sagas in Hauk's book, 55; contains the poems of the cycle of Angantyr, 90, 320 Hygelac, 187 sq.: see Beowulf Hymiskviða : see Thor IBSEN, Henrik, his Hærmændene paa Helgeland (Warriors in Helge- land), a drama founded on the Volsung story, its relation to Laxdæla Saga, 241 his Kongsemnerne (Rival Kings, Hacon and Skule), 306 Ider, romance, 378 sq., 396 n Iliad, 12 sq., 21, 60, 187, 348, 352 n Ingeld: see Froda Ingibjorg, daughter of Sturla, her wedding at Flugumyri, 298 sq. Hervor, daughter of Angantyr, 84, | Intelligenza, Ľ, 439 n 129, 239 Hialli, 177 Hickes, George, D.D., 84 n, 91 Hildebrand, Lay of, 88, 94, 101 n, 105 Hildeburg: see Finnesburh Hildegund (Hildegyth), 97 sq.: see Walter Hnæf: see Finnesburh Hobs, Mr. (i.e. Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury), 35 Hodbrodd, in story of Helgi and Sigrun, 83, 111 Hogni, father of Sigrun, 83, 111 Hogni, son of Giuki, brother of Gunnar, Gothorm, and Gudrun, 117, 173 sq. see Hagen Homeric analogies in medieval litera- ture, 10 sq. Hrafn Sveinbjarnarson, a friend of Bishop Gudmund, 294; Hrafns Saga quoted, 44 n Hrafn: see Gunnlaug Hrafnkels Saga Freysgoða, the story of Hrafnkel, Frey's Priest, 212, 227 JEHORAM, Son of Ahab, in the famine of Samaria, 275 Johnson, Dr., 279 Joinville, Jean de, Seneschal of Champagne, his Life of St. Louis compared with Icelandic prose history, 307 sq. Jón Arason, Bishop of Hólar, the last Catholic Bishop in Iceland, beheaded by Reformers, 7th Nov- ember 1550, a notable character, 307 Jordanes, historian of the Goths, his version of the story of Erman- aric, its relation to Hamðismál, 76 Judith, old English poem of, 32, 33, 104 Julian, the Emperor, his opinion of German songs, 75 KARA, 113, 114 Kari, in Njála, 237 and Bjorn, 262-263 $ 448 EPIC AND ROMANCE Meyer, Paul, 334 n, 410 n, 439 Milan, Siege of, 440 Karl Jónsson, Abbot of Thingeyri in | Mephistopheles in Thessaly, 11 Iceland, author of Sverris Saga, 285 Kjartan, son of Olaf the Peacock (Laxdæla Saga), 14, 219, 235, 238, 427 his death, 276 sq. Mimming, the sword of Weland, 100 Morris, William, 236, 323, 382 Mort Arthure, alliterative poem, 207 Königskinder, die, German ballad, 374 | Mort Artus, French prose romance, Kormaks Saga, 148 n, 322 Kudrun, 205, 207 383 Morte d'Arthur: see Malory LANCELOT, the French prose romance, NIBELUNGENLIED, 122, 138, 172, 383 Landnámabók, of Ari the Wise, in Hauk's book, 54 Laurence, Bishop of Hólar (ob. 1331), his Life (Laurentius Saga), 306 Laxdæla Saga, the story of Laxdale (the Lovers of Gudrun), 212, 219; a new version of the Niblung story, 240 sq., 255 sq., 276 sq., 427 Leconte de Lisle, L'Épee d'Angantyr, 84 n Lessing's Laocoon, 272 Libeaux Desconus, romance in different versions-French, by Renaud de Beaujeu (Guinglain), 385, 392 sq., 439; English, 386, 392 Italian (Carduino), 386, 392 Ljósvetninga Saga, story of the House of Ljósavatn, 216, 217 205, 207 Niblung story, its relation to histori- cal fact, 25 sq.: see Gunnar, Hogni, Gudrun, Laxdæla Saga Nidad, 109 Njal, story of (Njála), 9, 14, 69, 212, 238, 252-255 OBERON: see Huon de Bordeaux Odd, Arrow (Örvar-Oddr), 84 Oddrun, sister of Brynhild and Attila, 118 Lament of (Oddrúnargrátr), in the 'Elder Edda,' 119, 124, 168 sq. Odd Ufeigsson: | Ufeigsson: see Bandamanna Saga Odoacer, referred to in Lay of Hilde- brand, 94 Odysseus, 8, 36 sq., 41, 82 Lokasenna (the Railing of Loki), 47, Odyssey, the, 11, 188; Aristotle's 130 Longnon, Auguste, 359 n Louis IX., king of France (St. Louis): see Joinville Lusiad, the, a patriotic epic, unlike the poetry of the 'heroic age,' 25 MACROBIUS, 53 Maldon, poem of the battle of (A.D 991), compared with the Iliad, 12, 59, 80, 101, 102, 134, 205, 244; compared with Roland, 62 sq., 337 Malory, Sir Thomas, his Morte d'Arthur, 248, 351 Mantrible, Bridge of the, 440 Marie de France, her Lays translated into Norwegian (Strengleikar), 318; Guingamor criticised, 385-388 Marino, 35 Martianus Capella, de Nuptiis Philo- logiae, studied in the Middle Ages, 53 Menglad, Rescue of, 90, 132: see Svipdag summary of, 20; romance in, 36 sq. Olaf Tryggvason, king of Norway, 235, 427 sq. Olkofra þáttr, the story of Alecap, related to Bandamanna Saga, 260 Ossian in the land of youth: see Guingamor Ovid in the Middle Ages, 54, 395, 412; Ovidius Epistolarum studied in Iceland, 69 Ovid's story of Medea, translated in the Roman de Troie, 382 sq., 397- 399; Heroides became the 'Saints' Legend of Cupid,' 396 PARIS, Gaston, 332, 333, 378, 385 n, 386, 392, 393 n, 439 Paulus Diaconus, heroic stories in the Lombard history, 76 sq. Peer Gynt, 196 Pèlerinage de Charlemagne (chanson de geste), 28, 62, 376 Percy, Thomas, D.D., Five Pieces of Runic Poetry, 84 n, 163 n INDEX 449 Phaeacia, Odysseus in, Bossu's criti- | Scotland, Complaynt of, romances cism, 36 Pindar, his treatment of myths, 49, 50 Poitiers, William IX., Count of, his poem on setting out for the Crusade, 362 Powell, F. York, 76: see Aage Prise d'Orange, chanson de geste of the cycle of William of Orange, in substance a romance of adven- ture, 358 QUESTE DEL ST. GRAAL, French prose romance, a contrast to the style of Chrestien de Troyes, 374, 383 RAGNAR LODBROK, his Death - Song (Krákumál), 162, 250, 338 Rainouart, the gigantic ally of William of Orange, 340; their names asso- ciated by Dante (Par. xviii. 46), 340 | Raoul de Cambrai (chanson de geste), 334 n, 342-344 Rastignac, Eugène de, 216 Reykdala Saga, the story of Vemund, Askel, and Skuta son of Askel, connected with the story of Glum, 223, 231 Rigaut, son of Hervi the Villain, in the story of Garin le Loherain, 355 Rimgerd the Giantess: see Atli Rímur, Icelandic rhyming romances, 207, 324 Roland, Chanson de, 28; compared with Byrhtnoth (Maldon), 62 sq.; with an incident in Njála, 303; 329 sq., 332 sq., 336-339, 353 sq. Roman de la Rose, of Guillaume de Lorris, 394, 403, 411 Rood, Dream of the, old English poem, 155 named in, 440 Scottish Field, alliterative poem on Flodden, 205 Shakespeare, his treatment of popular tales, 41 sq. Sibyl's Prophecy: see Volospá í Sievers, Dr. Eduard, Professor in Leipzig, 158 n Sigmund Brestisson, in Færeyinga Saga, 236, 281 Sigmund, father of Sinfiotli, Helgi, and Sigurd, 110, 127 Signild: see Sivard Sigrdrifa, 133 Sigrun see Helgi Sigurd, the Volsung (O.N. Sigurðr), 25, 116 sq., 129, 133 fragmentary Lay of (Brot af Sigur- darkviðu), 119 Lay of: see Brynhild Sinfiotli, debate of, and Gudmund, 111 Sivard og Brynild, Danish ballad, translated, 147-149 Skallagrim, how he told the truth to King Harald, 220 Skarphedinn, son of Njal, 218, 252- 255, 280, 303 Skirnir: see Frey Skule, Duke, the rival of Hacon, 306 Skuta: see Reykdæla Saga Snorri Sturluson (A.D. 1178-1241), author of the Edda, 49; and of the Lives of the Kings of Norway, 284; his murder avenged at Flugu- myri, 301 Snorri the Priest (Snorri Goði), in Eyrbyggja and other Sagas, 216, 245 Sonatorrek (the Sons' Loss), poem by Egil Skallagrimsson, q.v. Sorli see Hamðismál Rosamund and Alboin in the Lombard Spenser, 392 history, 26, 77 Rosmunda, a tragedy, by Rucellai, 77 Rou, Roman de, the author's visit to Broceliande, 29 SAM (Sámr), Gunnar's dog, 246 Sarpedon's address to Glaucus, 13 Sarus and Ammius (Sorli and Ham- ther), brothers of Suanihilda (Jor- danes), 76: see Hamðismál Saxo Grammaticus, 80, 91, 122, 172, 207 Stephens, George, sometime Professor in Copenhagen, 91 Stevenson, R. L., Catriona, 196 n Sturla of Hvamm (Hvamm-Sturla), founder of the house of the Stur- lungs, his life (Sturlu Saga), 290- 294 Sturla (c. A.D. 1214-1284), son of Thord, and grandson of Hvamin- Sturla, nephew of Snorri, author of Sturlunga Saga (q.v.) and of Hákonar Saga (q.v.), 71, 286 2 G 450 EPIC AND ROMANCE Sturlunga Saga (more accurately Is- | Thorolf Bægifot: see Eyrbyggja lendinga Saga), of Sturla, Thord's son, a history of the author's own times, using the forms of the heroic Sagas, 71, 282, 236, sq. Suanihilda: see Swanhild Svarfdæla Saga, the story of the men Thorolf, Kveldulf's son: see Skalla- grim of Swarfdale (Svarfaðardalr), 228 Sveidal, Ungen, Danish ballad, on the story of Svipdag and Menglad, 132, 145 sq. Sverre, king of Norway (ob. 1202), his Life (Sverris Saga), written by Abbot Karl Jónsson at the king's dictation, 285; quotes a Volsung poem, 318 Svipdag and Menglad, old Northern poems of, 132 sq.: see Sveidal Swanhild (O.N. Svanhildr), daughter of Sigurd and Gudrun, her cruel death; the vengeance on Ermanaric known to Jordanes in the sixth century, 76: see Hamðismál TASSO, 21, 24; his critical essays on Tasso, heroic poetry, 34 Tegnér, Esaias, 163; his Frithiofs Saga, 317 Tennyson, Enid, 406 Theodoric (O.N. þióðrekr), a hero of Teutonic epic in different dialects, 25, 94, 100; fragment of Swedish poem on, inscription on stone at Rök, 90: see Gudrun Thidrandi, whom the goddesses slew, 239 þidreks Saga (thirteenth century), a Norwegian compilation from North German ballads on heroic subjects, 91, 140 Thomas: see Tristram Thor, in old Northern literature, his Fishing for the World Serpent (Hymiskviða) 49, 90, 110; the Winning of the Hammer (pryms- kviða), 49, 90, 93, 110 Danish ballad of, 144 the contention of, and Odin (Har- barzlió), 89, 130 Thorarin, in Eyrbyggja, the quiet man, 262 Thorgils and Haflidi (þorgils Saga ok Hafliða), 261, 273, 289 sq. Thorkell Hake, in Ljósvetninga Saga, 258 porsteins Saga Hvíta, the story of Thorstein the White, points of re- semblance to Laxdæla and Gunn- laugs Saga, 322 þorsteins Saga Stangarhöggs (Thorstein Staffsmitten), a short story, 323 Thrond of Gata (Færeyinga Saga), 281 þrymskviða : see Thor Thrytho, 188 Thurismund, son of Thurisvend, king of the Gepidae, killed by Alboin, 78 Tirant lo Blanch (Tirant the White, Romance of), 44 n; a moral work, 255 Trissino, author of Italia liberata dai Goti, a correct epic poem, 34 Tristram and Iseult, 384; Anglo- Norman poems, by Béroul and Thomas, 393; of Chrestien (lost), 394 Troy, Destruction of, alliterative poem, 207 UFEIG: see Bandamanna Saga Uistean Mor mac Ghille Phadrig, 196 Uspak: see Bandamanna Saga VAFÞRÚÕNISMÁL, mythological poem in Elder Edda,' 90, 130, 133 Vali see Bandamanna Saga Vápnfirðinga Saga, the story of Vopnafjord, 221, 260 Vatnsdæla Saga, story of the House of Vatnsdal, 216, 217 Vemund: see Reykdala Saga Vergi, la Chastelaine de, a short tragic story, 413-415 Viga Glúms Saga: see Glum, 223 Víga-Styrr: see Heiðarvíga Saga N.B.-The story referred to in the text is preserved in Jón Olafsson's recollection of the leaves of the MS. which were lost in the fire of 1728 (Islendinga Sögur, 1847, ii. p. 296). It is not given in Mr. William Morris's translation of the extant portion of the Saga, appended to his Eyrbyggja. Vigfusson, Gudbrand, 89, 320 n, 324 n Viglund, Story of, a romantic Saga, 319 Villehardouin, a contemporary of Snorri, 307 INDEX 451 Volospá (the Sibyl's Song of the Doom of the Gods), in the 'Poetic Edda,' 50, 89, 161; another copy in Hauk's book, 54, 107 Volsunga Saga, a prose paraphrase of old Northern poems, 89, 91, 320 Volsungs, Old Lay of the, 111 WADE, Song of, fragment recently discovered, 206 Waldere, old English poem (frag- ment), 91, 100, 105, 134, 187: see Walter of Aquitaine Walewein, Roman van, Dutch romance of Sir Gawain; the plot compared with the Gaelic story of Mac Iain Direach, 385, 388-392 Waltharius, Latin poem by Ekke- hard, on the story of Walter of Aquitaine, q.v. Walter of Aquitaine, 6, 91, 97 sq., 239 Wanderer, the, old English poem, 155 Ward, H. L. D., his Catalogue of MS. Romances in the British Museum, 323 Wealhtheo, 191 Weland, 387 represented on the Franks casket in the British Museum, 55 mentioned in Waldere, 100, 188 Lay of, in 'Poetic Edda,' 90, 109 Well at the World's End, 440 Widia, Weland's son, 100, 188 Widsith (the Traveller's Song), old English poem, 88, 133, 155 Wiglaf, the loyal servitor' in Beowulf, 192 William of Orange, old French epic hero, 339-340: see Coronemenz Looïs, Charroi de Nismes, Prise d'Orange, Aliscans, Rainouart THE END Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh TOLL 116, 11 Mi N H UNID HIG N SITY HIG MI UNIV STH SITY UNIVERSIT BOUND UNIV ERS H AUG 131928 UNT OF MICH, UNIV RSIT LIBRARY. N السلام M NIV ERS ITY MICHIC N N UN AN -MIC UNIV ? AN હો CHIG OW UNIV VERSITY AN SITY CH mas UN N UNID ER R SITY N INIC RSITY HIG H MI MI Mi OF UN VERS UNIV UN N. です ​VERS OTH RSIT) HIG RSITY A AN MI OF M الار OF MI UN UNIV હું UNIVE MICHIG E UNIT ERSIT ERS VERSIT MIC UNIV UNIVE OF. 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